Why Aren't Australian Journalists Backing Julian Assange? 4

The matter of Julian Assange and Australian msm journalism just got more and more interesting for me today when I stumbled across a change.org petition update, headed 150,000 signatories then Twitter suspends our petitioner's account on Twitter.

The update, of 19/6/19, was written by... a Phillip Adams, Brisbane, Australia. Of course, the author of the update, is emphatically NOT the well-known Radio National broadcaster despite the identical spelling of their names.

The update set me wondering whether or not any of the 150,000 signatories to the original petition signed it thinking the Brisbane Adams was actually the ABC broadcaster. (You can access the former's update at change.org where he gives his suspended twitter account as @PhillipAdams64.)

Now I may be wrong, but my hunch is that few of them referred to in the update even knew who the broadcaster was.

But then a friend dropped in, assuring me that he'd heard the ABC broadcaster discussing Julian Assange, he seemed to think, positively. This, I thought was most unlike our PEP (Progressive Except Palestine) broadcaster, but felt compelled to check it out anyway.

Adams the broadcaster, of course, runs ABC Radio National's Late Night Live (LNL) program, so I headed to the LNL archives, specifically to the entry labelled 'Journalism', and trawled back in time until I found the only discussion in all of the entries listed there on Julian Assange.

It was dated 2/3/11, and headed Robert Manne: The untold story of Julian Assange. (If Robert Manne is unknown to you, just click on the relevant MERC label below.) Note that Adams and Manne are discussing only that period, in the mid-1990s, well before WikiLeaks, when Assange and others like him were collectively known as cypherpunks.

To cut to the chase, here is Adams' guest, Robert Manne, responding to his request to say where Assange stood in relation to the other 1990s cypherpunks. Note that, while a grudging, highly qualified admiration for Assange is the most we get from Manne, we don't even get that from Phillip Adams. Here's Manne's assessment of Assange, the cypherpunk, vis-a-vis other cypherpunks of the time:

"[Assange] is a real extremist on the hardline, electronic libertarian [model/spectrum?] who just would not put up with any state interference to individual liberties. On the other hand, he was from the point of view of left/right economics, more a left-wing libertarian or a left-wing anarchist in that he just didn't believe in the neoliberal philosophy of dual market and capitalism. So he had quite a complicated position which comes from his postings - which are all available if anyone took the trouble to to read them. So he is very hardline on the question of the struggle against the state trying to suborn individuals who want to communicate privately on the one hand. On the other hand, he's not an Ayn Rand type, whereas a lot of [the cypherpunks] were."

Typically, Phillip Adams asked Manne if Assange was "simply anti-American." Manne disagreed, saying:

"He understands the evils of Communism. One of his great heroes is Alexander Solzhenitsyn... One of the ironies is that people like John Pilger are now his great supporters, but in fact - or Michael Moore, the film maker - Assange doesn't respect people like that in reality... He's not a journalist at all, but even if he was to some extent a journalist... He is a revolutionary, not a non-violent revolutionary... He is the first person who has gotten away with threatening the extremely powerful."

Note that line, "He's not a journalist, but even if he were..."! Not to mention Manne's flabbergasting characterisation of Assange as a "violent" revolutionary because he "got away with threatening the extremely powerful."

Finally, I repeat, this was the only LNL program which touched on the subject of Julian Assange in the LNL archive, and was emphatically NOT any kind of endorsement of him. Consider this for the record.

Nothing is Sacred

"Meanwhile they cut down, burned up, defaced and mutilated billboards." The Monkey Wrench Gang, Edward Abbey, 1975

***

I can't resist this, even if it is off-topic:

"Speaking after visiting the Bathurst 1000 motor race, Mr Morrison said The Everest [horse race] was one of the biggest events of the year and generated 'massive opportunities' for the city and the state. 'Why not put it on the biggest billboard Sydney has?' he said. Mr Morrison... said he would 'put the Bathurst 1000 on the Harbour Bridge if I thought it was going to get more people there. It's just common sense and I don't know why people are getting precious about it'." (Racing boss puts blame on state, Garry Maddox, Sydney Morning Herald, 8/10/18)

So says our newly-minted neoliberal prime minister Scott Morrison, weighing in on the controversy over projecting advertising for this, that or the other time-wasting activity onto Sydney's landmark structures such as the Opera House or the Harbour Bridge.

Whether iconic or world heritage-listed, man-made or natural wonder, it matters not. To the neoliberal mindset everything is just a potential billboard.

As the High Priestess of the neoliberal cult, Ayn Rand, put it in her 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged:

"Uncoiling from among the curves of Wisconsin's hills, the highway was the only evidence of human labor, a precarious bridge stretched across a sea of brush, weeds and trees. The sea rolled softly, in sprays of yellow and orange, with a few red jets floating up on the hillsides, with pools of remnant green in the hollows, under a pure blue sky... 'What I'd like to see,' said Rearden, 'is a billboard'." (from Here are 10 things I learned about the world from Ayn Rand's insane 'Atlas Shrugged', Adam Lee, alternet.org, 24/8/18)

The Australian poet Denis Kevans (1939-2005) once wrote a memorable poem from the perspective of an Indigenous Australian. It begins thus:

"Ah, white man, I am searching for the sites sacred to you, where you walk, in silent worship, and you whisper poems too, where you tread, like me, in wonder, and your eyes are filled with tears, and you see the tracks you've travelled down your fifty thousand years."

Kevans' poem was titled Ah, White Man, Have You Any Sacred Sites?

The answer to your question, Denis, is no, the neoliberal white man has no sacred sites.