“The role of the corporate media is to protect, promote and legitimize the destructive and amoral aims of profit-seeking private power. Any journalist or columnist working within that system is actively aiding the corporate media achieve this goal. These gatekeepers, especially those regarded as liberal, are therefore culpable in the illegal wars and rapacious, planet-destroying actions of the worst corporations.” […]
Author: Simon Wood
Where are the Child Victims of the West?
It has been almost a year since the contorted body of little Alan Kurdi washed up on a Turkish beach, oblivious in death to the fact that he was to become the key pawn in a global media campaign seeking to cement public opinion in favor of intervention in Syria. The UK’s Guardian newspaper intoned at the time: To begin restoring that hope will inevitably mean […]
Persecuting Assange: The Mainstreaming of Neoliberal Pathology
“Objective journalism is one of the main reasons that American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long” – Hunter S. Thompson The non-profit journalistic and publishing organization WikiLeaks released on 22nd July 19,252 emails and 8,034 attachments sent from or received by Democratic National Committee (DNC) personnel. The emails exposed numerous instances of unprofessional, unethical and possibly illegal behaviour, including concerted attempts to […]
Two Weddings and a Funeral Redux
“Anytime bombs are used to target innocent civilians, it is an act of terror” – Barack Obama A US presidential policy guidance document on drone strikes – often referred to as the ‘drone playbook’ – was last week made public in edited form in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. Politico’s Josh Berstein […]
West Papua – Crushing Freedom for Profit
It’s about a political strategy that brings to worldwide recognition the plight of the people of West Papua, forces it onto a political agenda, forces it to the UN, forces an exposure of it and ultimately that allows the people of West Papua to make the choice of the kind of government they want and the kind of society in […]
Obama Does Hiroshima
“He started suffering nosebleeds about a week after the bombing. They called a doctor, and my aunt put a wash basin by his side and stayed up all night taking care of him. But the bleeding from his gums and nose grew worse, and he finally died on the 22nd. Before he breathed his last, he complained that his stomach […]
Anti-Semitism Allegations and the Sound of Silence
“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake” – Napoleon Bonaparte Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone has been suspended from the UK’s Labour Party for ‘bringing the party into disrepute’ after making comments deemed by observers to be anti-Semitic. Livingstone has denied that he or his comments were anti-Semitic, alleging instead that there is a concerted smear campaign […]
Panama Papers: Bear in the Woods
If the auspiciously named ICIJ and their partner journalists were actually interested in excising this offshore cancer for want of a better world, they would be demanding that all corporations and officials in positions of significant influence publish their tax affairs for ICIJ or public examination. It would be releasing all the Panama Papers: at the very least to independent journalists for them to report on or at best in a public database.
Diego Garcia: Justice for the Chagossians
“We must surely be very tough about this. The object of the exercise is to get some rocks which will remain ours; there will be no indigenous population except seagulls who have not yet got a committee. (The Status of Women Committee does not cover the rights of birds). Unfortunately, along with the seagulls go some few Tarzans and Man […]
Bernie Sanders: Talking about a Revolution
“As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked – and rightly so – what about Vietnam? They […]
UN Ruling on Assange Exposes UK Lawlessness
“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed” – Martin Luther King, Jr. For any student of modern propaganda techniques, the ruling announced last week in favor of WikiLeaks founder and editor-in-chief Julian Assange by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) has provided fertile ground for research. Indeed, the level […]
Music to the Ears of Entitlement
“We have allowed our party to be hijacked by people joining by text for three quid” – Unknown Labour MP (quoted by Guardian columnist Andrew Rawnsley) As any career journalist will tell you, the first paragraph of your article must have a killer hook in these days of fickle, easily bored readerships. Tim Ross, senior political correspondent at The Daily […]