Whistle up some Whistleblowers... before it's too late

John Pilger writes in his article about the need for a free media that "Murdoch's News Limited and Fairfax Media - control 86 per cent of the Australian press" when at the turn of the 19th century there were 143 independent papers in Australia; that's 143 different, disparate, diverse and sometime dissident voices. Now there are 2 shouting and a couple of murmurers left.

I don't know about you, but I find that pretty horrific and one of the main reasons I read mainly foreign press. To submit to Murdoch's hegemony is to give up your right to freedom of thought, speech and enlightenment- no learning here, merely biased reporting with the sole intention of pushing 'his' agenda and that of his bourgeoisie mates. How can you have an informed opinion when there's no other interpretation but one to choose from? Only one assessment of what is considered news and therefore available to you to read (or not)?

Already the press in the UK are coming to realise that the government, in collusion with their pet press, have turned the populace against the poor by blaming them for the country's ills; bludgers, welfare leeches etc. Just the same propaganda Hitler used to turn the people away from any of his failings and instead aim their hatred at the fabricated scapegoat; Jews. It's an old but effective means of protecting the ruling powers. Especially if you have ignorant subjects. Or scared ones.

And what better way to keep the proletariat uninformed than to 'censor' their information flow?- only give em what you want em to have.; the biased perspective.

Fear is an excellent tool for controlling the population. As Stephen Walt talks about in his recent article in Foreign Policy, keeping people scared goes back at least to Truman where he knew to sell something to the populace, you had to scare the hell out of them and they would follow you into anything; all in the name of their security and protection.

But I disagree. It's obvious that Neanderthal head boombahs would have kept their clans together with a fairly decisive bop to the head with a club and threats of leaving them out for the sabretooths if there was any argument about what they were having for dinner or who's wife he was having for dessert.

The government (and the opposition) do it here with "boat people" but more of that anon. It's simply a policy of "look over here, look over here- it's scary stuff. But don't look at my education policy or budget or taxes or anything other than the scary thing; [insert here the fabricated scapegoat- quite irrelevant what or who it is]. Concentrate now... you are getting sleepy..." Policy making by distraction.

Walt goes on,  "The greater but more subtle danger, however, is that our society gradually acclimates to ever-increasing levels of secrecy and escalating levels of government monitoring, all of it justified by the need to "keep us safe." Instead of accepting that a (very small) amount of risk is inevitable in the modern world, our desire for total safety allows government officials to simultaneously shrink the circle of individual freedoms and to place more and more of what they are doing beyond our purview."

Get Up! alerted the public last month to a gala fundraising event  for a right wing think tank, costing $500 per plate. Tony Abbott, Gina Rinehart and Rupert Murdoch spoke and Abbott assured the crowd that he would, if elected, agree to most of the 75 policies suggested to "radically transform Australia... [T]his think tank’s wish list? Independent media – gone. The ABC to be broken up and sold off, SBS to be fully privatised. Corporations to be allowed to make secret payments to political parties, Medicare gone for most Australians; a return to WorkChoices, just by another name. The clean energy fund and the renewable energy target – scrapped. Funding for sport and arts – including the Australian Institute of Sport – axed.It goes on. Never before has the extreme conservative agenda been laid out so clearly."

Frankly I don't know which to be more appalled by. 

You see if all this goes through, Australia will be less. The ABC and SBS are the last bastions of 'free press' here (laugh, but it's the closest thing we have- work with me) . Secret payments?- I'm sorry that must be illegal- puppeteers in the making. Whoever pays the biggest donation becomes the greatest power holder in the country- and secretly?  Really?

We simply must become more attentive to what is happening around us before, like the US seems intent on doing, we begin a headlong rush into the Stasi State like that of East Germany post war, where the governmental agencies ruled every aspect of not just the public domain, but the private. The people lived in a perpetually heightened state of fear and suspicion. No one could trust a neighbour or even a family member to protect them and not go to the authorities to betray them for some petty transgression such as putting your rubbish into someone else's bin. 

James Goodale, (New York Times lawyer for the Nixon era "Pentagon Paper's" scandal)  was on Democracy Now on Friday to suggest he thought Obama is on a par with Nixon as far as targetting of the press goes. Goodale believes if Obama prosecutes Julian Assange, then he will indeed be worse than Nixon. The attack on whistleblowers began here; whereby whistleblowers were vilified as breachers of their country's safety and security rather than as ousters of governmental incompetence and treachery.

In an article on the Committee to Protect Journalists by Sara Rafsky, Goodale is quoted as saying, "journalists must be aware that the precedent of prosecuting WikiLeaks, essentially criminalizing the newsgathering process, would put the whole profession at risk. "

While Obama is hurriedly trying to push through a shield law to enshrine protection for journalists and their sources, ostensibly to deny aspersions cast by Goodale and comparisons to Nixon. However Goodale asserts, "the bill comes with several controversial elements, including a national security exemption and the need to legally define who is a journalist in order to be effective."

That sounds like a nice big exemption clause seeing Obama is eroding civil liberties at more than 12 parsecs a week. Interpretation of laws is everything, as the senate inquiry into the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) are now finding when questioning the CIA concerning drone strikes. What was intended and what is now interpreted by the government are two polar entities... We're talking Russell Brand and Barbara Walters. Timid, fluffy rabbit and a soulless, killing-machine shark. Pink icinged cupcake and sauerkraut. 

Glenn Greenwald says in his article on the AP scandal, "This is what is reaped from continuously vesting the US government with greater and greater surveillance powers in the name of Terrorism and other fears....If you talk to any real investigative journalist, they will tell you that an unprecedented climate of fear has emerged in which their sources are petrified to talk to them. That the Obama administration has prosecuted double the number of whistleblowers under espionage statutes as all previous administrations combined has already severely chilled the news gathering process."

And again: "it is vital to oppose such assaults [on civil liberties] in the first instance no matter who is targeted because such assaults, when unopposed, become institutionalized. Once that happens, they are impossible to stop when -- as inevitably occurs -- they expand beyond the group originally targeted.  "

I've been getting all hot under the collar following the massive privacy infringement this month by the US DoJ against AP journalists; essentially stealing two months of phone records which of course jeopardises all sources' privacy. I fretted that all this will be coming here and soon to be on a screen near you, only to find after a bit of digging, it already has.

Last year, Philip Dorling in his article Be Careful She Might Hear You says, "Telephone tapping and bugging have become routine investigative tools. Indeed, published statistics show that Australian law enforcement telecommunications interception activity is greater both in absolute and relative terms than that undertaken in the United States... 18 times greater than that in the US."

If we don't heed warnings by such as Greenwald, Walt and Dorling here in Australia, we will eventually or quickly lose the means to challenge the government, opening the door to totalitarianism. The upshot is, if the government persecutes journalists and demands (or steals) disclosure about their sources, whistleblowers and leakers (whatever the distinction is) will turn off their photocopiers, crush their Canon spyomatic SLR's and regurgitate their USBs and bin them.

If they camouflage themselves effectively and disappear back into the bureaucratic jungle from whence they first shyly appeared, refusing to enter any traps (honeyed or otherwise) we lose the ability to keep governments honest. Most of the leaks have been to uncover corrupt or unethical behaviour. If that is gone, governments, operating in the dark do so without checks, unhindered, to do as they please. In our name, using our taxes.  

Bradley Manning is just the beginning. When he goes down, they will chase down Assange and prosecute him for complicity and aiding the enemy or some such tosh. No one will speak out again. There's that fear again. Effective isn't it? Just like the school yard bully. Stay silent, stay safe. Stay small. Don't make eye contact and hope they turn on each other. 

So if you're thinking of becoming the next 'Deep Throat' (no, not the porno version- that's another page) then let Nicholas Weaver enlighten you and read on here.