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Attacks on the Free Press by Abbott is policy in America
by darcy Thursday, Aug 13 2015, 9:00am
international / prose / post

It is well known that Oz PM, Tony Abbott, is incapable of a sensible original thought or vision, he is an obedient servant of the elite and an attack dog, that’s all he knows as two years of argumentative nothing government clearly indicates.

Abbott deferring to master Murdoch

Obedient servants follow orders as they are incapable of real leadership, a well-established fact, and so we should view all of Abbott’s actions as errands for his unrepresentative wealthy masters, which I would add, are having a very difficult time maintaining this useless clown in office.

Aussies were shocked when Abbott launched an attack on the public broadcaster (ABC), which case was fervently supported by the Murdoch press for reasons that are obvious, Mr Murdoch has always envied the popularity and command the ABC has as a TRUSTED news source and investigative documentary maker. Murdoch, after installing lying Abbott as PM no doubt instructed him to dismantle the ABC in order to eliminate his strongest competition in Oz; when you make and break national leaders playing fair has nothing to do with it, isn’t that right, Rupert? So send an owned, puppet politician on an errand. However, Abbott has failed to dent the ABC’s popularity among Aussies that view Murdoch’s rags as a pathetic joke -- if you want respect and readership Rupert then EARN IT, which means goodbye to your sensationalist and titillating crap which may suit the mindless masses of America but definitely does not cut it here in informed Australia.

Free press and real investigative journalism are anathema to propagandists like Murdoch and his CFR ilk, these interests have a clear agenda of self-interest not service to the community. So it is no surprise that puppet president Obama also pursues the free press and whistleblowers with a vengeance, it has recently been revealed that Obama, under instruction no doubt, is literally at war with the last vestiges of the free press in America. A Pentagon manual openly states that journalists should be considered as “unprivileged belligerents,” what next, ‘terrorists,’ no doubt? So it may cast a new light on an unimaginative Doberman attack dog like Abbott – Australia in no way subscribes to American totalitarianism and unrepresentative, privileged, minority rule.

Now a warning to megalomaniac plutocrats like Murdoch, who have utilised press freedoms to interfere in the democratic political process on far too many occasions. A representative government should nationalise any media group that clearly has a partisan agenda and dares to interfere with the democratic process of any nation. I truly wish that average Aussies would wake to all the forces that prevail against them. People like Murdoch want only a soporific, mentally compliant population to be led by the nose without interference from real journalists of integrity.

Article from Reason.com follows and it should assist everyone in assessing the causes of the undemocratic agenda of most western puppet leaders. America is a fully elite captured nation today and what a hell hole it is; Aussies do not wish to emulate a clearly sick and devolving nation or be led by a lackey that serves the same elite interests as Obama.

Abbott and his retrogressive useless government should be removed from office as soon as possible if Australia wishes to progress and regain its democracy, sovereignty and former place in the world; it is clear that while Abbott remains in office the nation will continue to go backwards at speed while former trailing nations overtake Australia and make it an irrelevant backwater.

Obama’s Brutal War on the Press: Pentagon Manual Calls for Treating Journalists as ‘Unprivileged Belligerents.’
by Scott Shackford

It’s well documented that President Barack Obama’s administration has been brutal in targeting whistleblowers who leak information to the press. The Department of Justice has spied on the Associated Press and Fox News to track down sources of information. It has slid down the World Press Freedom Index to 49th place, lower than several African and South American countries.

Now a new Pentagon document, a Law of War Manual, states that journalists can be treated like “unprivileged belligerents,” which is apparently the new term for “unlawful combatants,” which some may recall was the new term for “suspected terrorists.”

According to some media coverage of the manual, military leaders are insisting they’re not declaring that journalists are the enemy. Rather they’re pointing out that journalists just might be the actual enemy, as in terrorists, spies, and propagandists posing as journalists.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, however, is concerned that the vagueness of the manual will give clearance to the military to detain and harass journalists with very little evidence that they’re doing anything but honest reporting:

This broad and poorly defined category gives U.S. military commanders across all services the purported right to at least detain journalists without charge, and without any apparent need to show evidence or bring a suspect to trial. The Obama administration’s Defense Department appears to have taken the ill-defined practices begun under the Bush administration during the War on Terror and codified them to formally govern the way U.S. military forces treat journalists covering conflicts.

The manual’s impact overseas, especially in the short run, may be even worse. The language used to justify treating journalists as “unprivileged belligerents” comes at a time when international law for conflict is being flouted by armed groups–including government, militia, and insurgent forces–from Ukraine and Iraq to Nigeria and the Congo–and during a time in which CPJ has documented record numbers of journalists being imprisoned and killed. At a time when international leadership on human rights and press freedom is most needed, the Pentagon has produced a self-serving document that is unfortunately helping to lower the bar.

And the bar is apparently already pretty low:

The U.S. military has taken action against journalists before. Bilal Hussein, whose photo of insurgents firing on U.S. soldiers in Fallujah in 2004 helped earn Associated Press photographers, including Hussein, the Pulitzer Prize, was detained by Marines in 2006 and held for two years. The U.S. military never provided evidence or an explanation for the detention of the AP photographer, who was presented with CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award in 2008.

Sami al-Haj, an Al-Jazeera cameraman, was detained in December 2001 by Pakistani forces along the Afghan-Pakistani border while covering a U.S.-led offensive against the Taliban in Afghanistan. U.S. military forces accused the Sudanese cameraman of being a financial courier for armed groups and assisting al-Qaeda and extremist figures, but never provided evidence to support the claims, CPJ found in its 2006 report “Sami al-Haj: The Enemy?” Al-Haj, who is now is head of the human rights and public liberties department at Al-Jazeera, was held for six years at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo, Cuba. Prior to releasing him, U.S. military officials tried to compel al-Haj to agree to spy on Al-Jazeera as a condition of his release, his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, told CPJ and media outlets.

The New York Times‘ Editorial Board came out swinging against this new manual this week:

The manual’s argument that some reporting activities could be construed as taking part in hostilities is ludicrous. That vaguely-worded standard could be abused by military officers to censor or even target journalists.

Equally bizarre is the document’s suggestion that reporters covering wars should operate only with the permission of “relevant authorities” or risk being regarded as spies. To cover recent wars, including the civil war in Libya in 2011 and the war in Syria, reporters have had to sneak across borders, at great personal risk, to gather information. For the Pentagon to conflate espionage with journalism feeds into the propaganda of authoritarian governments. Egypt, for instance, has tried to discredit the work of Western journalists by falsely insinuating that many of them are spies.

Even more disturbing is the document’s broad assertion that journalists’ work may need to be censored lest it reveal sensitive information to the enemy. This unqualified statement seems to contravene American constitutional and case law, and offers other countries that routinely censor the press a handy reference point.

The manual has an odd disclaimer that it may not necessarily reflect the views of the “government as a whole.” But at this point, it should hardly be a surprise if it did.

Abbott and Obama

http://reason.com/blog/2015/08/11/the-obama-administrations-war-on-the-pre