Okay, it refers to Bush as Emperor George Bush II. But on the other hand, it cuts through government propaganda, like no mainstream newspaper attempts to seriously do. It’s not so much a matter of holding a far-left perspective as of constantly mentioning important facts that other news sources ignore. For example, it refers to Iraq’s interim governmnet as a puppet show, which it clearly is, and cites the proportion of people who support the interim leader (5%), and the percentage of people who see Americans as liberators (2%). It also has an article by American socialists giving the reasons they opposed Reagan and criticising the media’s unquestioning praise of him after his death. Of course they are totally valid reasons why they oppose him, and there would be reasons to support him too just like with any living politician. It just seems very dishonest of the mainstream media to barely mention poverty or wars while going on about some vague way he influenced the Russians or the economy. And to avoid mentioning he supported Saddam Hussein while going on in the next page about how bad Saddam is. It makes you worry what they’ll say when Bush dies. Maybe if you have a criminal in your own family who just died it’s normal to concentrate on their good points instead. But there’s no reason for the press to suddenly support someone who caused the death and suffuring of thousands just because they died. That would be rewriting history.
Mainstream newspapers make a point of having “right-wing” commentators and “left-wing” commentators, many of which seem to have a rabid fear of the other ideology. But cultivating a hatred for John Howard, the Liberal Party, Bush, America, and “right-wingers” doesn’t actually do anything except entertain people who already are opposed to these and incite people who are in favour. The point is they really rarely mention the very valid, and obvious once you clear away the propaganda, evidence why the Liberals in power is worse for most people than having another party, the evidence that shows the American government’s imperialistic intentions, and the facts that contradict governemtn propaganda.
There’s a lot of things the commercial media avoids mentioning. Like even now Iraq is in the papers all the time and the pages are filled with people arguing for or against the invasion. And yet in all the ways the U.S. has interfered with Iraq over the decades this isn’t the worst case. The U.S. (or “UN”) sanctions against Iraq killed a million people, while media attention rarely focused on that suffering or the UN or U.S. as the cause of it. How Saddam got to power, whether any Iraqis support him and the question of whether anyone is better off under him and what a feasible alternative might be is not discussed in the media. If the decision over whether whether to invade Iraq is framed as a decision over whether to remove the dictator Saddam Hussein whom nobody supports or whether to do nothing because of the risks and the death toll that would be involved in action, there is a sensible argument for either side. As long as the choice is represented like this, to a person who picks up the paper or switches on the news the U.S. and other invading companies will never look evil or insane, only foolhardy at the worst. If, however the total profit to American companies through the invasion, the companies benefiting and the countries they are from, how oil will be affected, and the story of how the U.S. supported Saddam and the reasons it did are reported, the U.S. begins to look very different. It begins to look extremely sinister and frightening.
