Wikileaks wins Australian version of Pulitzer Award

Glenn Greenwald reports that in recognition for breaking stories like this, Wikileaks has been given Australia's highest journalism award.

The Walkley Awards are the Australian equivalent of the Pulitzers: that nation’s most prestigious award for excellence in journalism. Last night, the Walkley Foundation awarded its highest distinction — for “Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism” — to WikiLeaks, whose leader, Julian Assange, is an Australian citizen. The panel cited the group’s “courageous and controversial commitment to the finest traditions of journalism: justice through transparency,” and hailed it for having “applied new technology to penetrate the inner workings of government to reveal an avalanche of inconvenient truths in a global publishing coup.” As I’ve noted before, WikiLeaks easily produced more newsworthy scoops over the last year than every other media outlet combined, and the Foundation observed: “so many eagerly took advantage of the secret cables to create more scoops in a year than most journalists could imagine in a lifetime.” In sum: “by designing and constructing a means to encourage whistleblowers, WikiLeaks and its editor-in-chief Julian Assange took a brave, determined and independent stand for freedom of speech and transparency that has empowered people all over the world.” What makes this award so notable is that the United States — for exactly the same reasons the Foundation cited in honoring WikiLeaks’ journalism achievements — has spent the last year trying to criminalize and destroy the group . . . It is telling indeed that the U.S. — with the backing of its subservient allied governments — has devoted itself to the destruction of the world’s most effective journalistic outlet.

Continue ReadingWikileaks wins Australian version of Pulitzer Award

Mark your calendars for the Anti-Fourth-of-July

Mark your calendars for The Fourth-of-January, the antipode of The Fourth-of-July. The Fourth-of-January will be a new national date of remembrance.  This new occasion will be about the United States of America, but there won't be any fireworks and it's not going to be a happy occasion. In fact, as happy as the Fourth-of-July is, the Fourth-of-January will be the diametric opposite. Citizens will somberly recognize the Fourth-of-January by gathering together to watch mock funerals wind through their city centers, where they will mourn the death of democracy. An American flag will be placed prominently on the hearse, serving as a symbol of the deceased. On the Fourth-of-January, American citizens will actually bury these American Flags to recognize the fact that ordinary citizens of the United States have no  meaningful input in how their federal government is run. At the destination of the funeral procession, citizens will carve these words onto the tombs:

Here lies Old Glory, destroyed by Citizens United and by the unwillingness politicians to pass a Constitutional Amendment and enabling laws to remove private money from the American political system.

The Fourth-of-January will be a day when people consciously refrain from reading The United States Constitution, lest they become deluded that federal politicians are public servants of ordinary citizens.  It will be a day when, instead, mourners read proclamations that the existence of vast amounts of money in the political system has made it impossible to meaningfully debate even the simplest of political issues. It will be a day when Americans recognize that big corporate money has turned America's politicians into  psychopaths.  It will be a day when Americans remind themselves that their every year their politicians spend more tax dollars to air-condition soldiers' tents in the Middle East than they allocate for the total budget of NASA, to explore the mysteries of outer space. The Fourth-of-January will be a date when Americans consider  renaming of all of their major holidays based on fact that quest for corporate profits now dominate all celebrations, and that America's news media celebrates this fact. On the Fourth-of-January, Americans will recognize that, contrary to the will of the People, America has become unstoppably addicted to warmongering, and that it has become a nation that doesn't treasure safe food, medicine, chemicals, air and water.  It has become a nation that allows big banks, fossil fuel companies, telecoms and insurance companies to write national laws that cause massive financial damages to the People. On this new Day of Remembrance, Americans will pause for a moment of silence to recognize the brutalizing and almost unstoppable financial and political power of America's corporate-military-prison-industrial-Complex. The Fourth-of-January will recognize that laws passed contrary to the wishes of the majority of citizens have resulted in sub-standard schools, catastrophic national debt, state sponsored torture, spying on citizens, governmental secrecy and abuses inflicted on citizens and journalists who are attempting to exercise their Constitutional rights.  On the Fourth-of-January Americans will recognize that their highest court has become deaf to the needs of the People, and that the "rule of law" is rapidly becoming available only to those of significant financial means. The Fourth-of-January is a day when we warn our grade school children that much of what they are reading in their American civics textbooks is stunningly false. The Fourth-of-January will be celebrated every year unless and until the corrupting force of private money is removed from the American political system. -- [Photo credits:  Derivative work funeral photo by Erich Vieth, incorporating flag photo by Tarajane at Dreamstime.com (with permission) and Original funeral photo, which is a public domain work.  Corporate flags photo by Erich Vieth, photo taken at the 2011 downtown St. Louis Fourth of July celebration].

Continue ReadingMark your calendars for the Anti-Fourth-of-July

Glenn Greenwald discusses the myth of journalistic objectivity

At Salon.com, Glenn Greenwald discusses the myth of journalistic objectivity by discussing the way one of the establishment's so-claimed "objective" journalists, Bob Schieffer, arrogantly portrayed himself to be "objective" in the course of abusing Ron Paul in a recent interview. Here's the problem (it was the same problem with Tim Russert and it is the same problem with almost all of our celebrity journalists):  Some of Ron Paul's views are massively inconvenient to those who crave ever more warmongering:

(1) American interference and aggression in the Muslim world fuels anti-American sentiment and was thus part of the motivation for the 9/11 attack; and (2) American hostility and aggression toward Iran (in the form of sanctions and covert attacks) are more likely to exacerbate problems and lead to war than lead to peaceful resolution, which only dialogue with the Iranians can bring about.

Here's how celebrity journalists like Schieffer deal with these sorts of inconvenient truths:
Views that reside outside of the dogma of the leadership of either party are inherently illegitimate. Such views are generally ignored, but in those rare instances where they find their way into the discourse — such as this Paul interview — it is the duty of “objective” reporters like Schieffer to mock, scorn and attack them. Indeed, many journalists — such as Tim Russert and David Ignatius — excused their failures in the run-up to the Iraq War by pointing to the fact that the leadership of both parties were generally in favor of the war: in other words, since war opposition was rarely found among the parties’ leadership, it did not exist and/or was inherently illegitimate (in a March, 2003 interview, Schieffer explained what a great job the American media did in the run-up to the war) . . . I would have no problem with Schieffer’s adversarial behavior here if this were also how he treated claims made by David Petraeus, Joe Lieberman, John McCain, and Hillary Clinton. But one would never, ever see that. Part of this is what Jay Rosen calls “the Church of the Savvy”: journalists revere power and political success and thus revere those who wield it in their world (Washington) while scorning those who do not (like Paul). But part of it is also that their function is to defend the political establishment of which they are a part and glorify its orthodoxies — defined as: the approved views of the leadership of the two parties, which in turn reflect the interests of the private factions that control both parties — and, conversely, to try to delegitimize any views and/or persons posing a challenge to it. This is why one sees truly adversarial conduct from establishment journalists applied only to those who are relatively powerless and marginalized (i.e., OWS), or to those views that have no currency within the political establishment (Paul’s foreign policy/civil liberties arguments).
Greenwald concludes:
One reason modern establishment journalism has become so corrupted and worthless is because of the conceit that they engage in some sort of objective reporting that is free of bias and opinion, even as they are the stalwart defenders of a clear set of political opinions and interests (those wielded by the same power factions which they pretend to hold accountable). Any time someone is tempted to believe these fairy tales of objectivity, they should just re-watch this Schieffer interview.

Continue ReadingGlenn Greenwald discusses the myth of journalistic objectivity

A new Declaration for America: to wake up from its delusions

With the help of a DI reader who wishes to remain anonymous, I have created the following Declaration for modern Americans to wake up from their delusions. I'd recommend that all adults and school children put their hands over their hearts in the morning and say the following instead of pledging allegiance to the powers-that-be (but see here for an alternate form of the Pledge).

Continue ReadingA new Declaration for America: to wake up from its delusions

Or maybe we could say, “Good for the Chinese”

When someone from another country does something impressive, Americans are well-trained to be threatened. We are teaming with ressentiment. Here's an example from the July 18, 2011 edition of Time Magazine. Notice the photo on the right. It is an image of a brand new extremely long bridge, the longest sea bridge in the entire world. It is more than 26 miles long. It's extremely impressive. It is something that reminds me that the Chinese people have excelled in many ways. But notice the text under the photo. Especially notice the line: "The Jiaozhou Bay Bridge is yet another Chinese nose thumbing." Where does this writer get the idea that the Chinese have built the world's longest bridge to make the United States look bad? I hear this attitude all the time, exemplified by statements like this: "America is the world's greatest country." Despite the fact, of course, that there is much room for improvement in modern day United States. Many of these comments I hear uttered by Americans are aimed at the Chinese; for many Americans, anything impressive done by Chinese people is a threat to America. More disturbing, I fear that this ressentiment of outsiders builds into paranoia about outsiders and fuels the "need" for exhorbitant and irresponsible warmongering by the United States. I remember that in the months prior to 9/11, there was intense building hostility aimed at the Chinese. Then we got distracted by the Middle East. It seems that Americans intensely need an enemy, and that if they don't actually have one, they invent one. That is a destructive technique most of our politicians use to maintain power and obeisance of the governed. I'd recommend that Americans, especially those involved with the American media industry, work harder to keep their ressentiment in check. Time should have reacted to this amazing bridge by saying something like: "That's amazing engineering and construction! Well done, Chinese people." I'm afraid, though, that this attitude of being happy for the successes of others has become thoroughly un-American.

Continue ReadingOr maybe we could say, “Good for the Chinese”