Instead of steely, firm analysis of demagogy and corrupt conduct on the airways, a production line of clichés befitting a gouty monarch or mafia don was in the offing.
Pilger’s lengthy career marked the high-water mark for a certain type of journalism that could still at the time make it into various mainstream outlets. This eventually altered.
No Royal Commission could possibly deal with all the social and structural issues that afflict the treatment of the aged in a country where they are commodified and forgotten.
The Red Alert exercise is yet another dangerous exercise in the manufacturing of consent for war, an amorally bankrupt exercise that will sideline peaceful approaches. Again, Australian personnel and citizens will find themselves perishing in conflicts at the behest of an insensible hegemon.
Should Assange find himself shackled in the less than salubrious surrounds of the US carceral system, he will face one of the country’s most vicious statutes. The Espionage Act of 1917, also known as 18 USC 793, has worried the US legal profession for decades.
Unfortunately for those who still believe in the merits of international human rights laws, the Australian model, revised for European application, is bound to become ever more popular for populists and reactionaries.
