En Passant

The declining Australian economy means that whoever is in government in Australia will adopt and ratchet up attacks on wages, jobs, conditions, and social spending. To try to hide this reality the attacks on the manufactured ‘enemy within’ will intensify and broaden to more welfare recipients and perhaps on to the left. The terrorist threat will dominate our news when the biggest terrorists sit in Canberra and Washington.

The mainstream media will cheer on the multitude of attacks on the working class. Nowhere among the reams and reams of ’analysis’ of the economic issues facing ‘the nation’ will there be published alternative voices that identify capitalism as the problem and production organised democratically to satisfy human need rather than make a profit as the solution. This article will never see the light of day in the mainstream media.

The bigger picture is that The Canberra Times is part of the machinery that manufactures consent for capitalism. The far right, the right, the centre and the left that wants only to reform capitalism don’t challenge capitalism so are much much more likely to be published in the mainstream media, irrespective of the often misleading description given to these mouthpieces of capitalism as being either left wing or right wing.

A variety of opinions? A contest of ideas? Only those writers imbued with the capitalist ethos are published in the mainstream media.

Almost everything we are reading about ‘terror Australis’ is bullshit from Team Australia and the compliant media to further a particular goal – to unite us with the warmongers, racists and Islamophobes in yet another blood soaked certainly doomed adventure in the Middle East. It may also be a temporary distraction from the economic terrorism the Abbott government has unleashed on us.

If you know someone in the left-wing media who has made an outstanding contribution to journalism or to leadership, including campaigning journalism and journalism that looks outside the square – and it shouldn’t be that hard given much of the MSM produces ruling class sycophantic drivel – then nominate them. All you have to do is send 300 words explaining why to Barbara Blackman (barbara.blackman@walkleys.com).

Subscribe to Red Flag newspaper today. Help maintain a strong voice for the Palestinian resistance and counter to corporate media lies.

John Passant offers a way forward for a once mighty newspaper empire in steady decline.

You are never going to see me offered a regular spot in any mainstream media. Of course, once the lion rises from its slumbers the bosses’ media aren’t going to give any space to the enemy. So to understand what is going on you’ll just have to keep reading my blog and other sites like Red Flag and Green Left Weekly.

That the conservative commentators and media pundits who spread such lies, misinformation and hysterical jingoism to justify mass slaughter continue to be respected and celebrated by the establishment, and have faced no consequences of any import for their actions, speaks to the depravity and cynicism of modern capitalism writes Louise O’Shea in Red Flag.

The misguided tactics being adopted by today’s social commentators, led no doubt by a minority within them hell-bent on fomenting trouble, are only encouraging further protest. This in turn is giving the masses a sense of their own collective power, strengthening their organisations and leading to a deeper understanding of the issues involved – and no one wins from that. Worse still, it is enabling the media to portray politicians – those who should command the greatest respect – as weak and vulnerable. This only corrupts our great democracy, the crushing uniformity of which is the envy of the world.