David and Goliath

By Peter Boyle

When Rupert Murdoch’s Australian published a racist attack (see here) on Green Left Weekly and particularly its Arabic-language supplement, The Flame, I rang its editor, Soubhi Iskander, with the news.

“Peter, this proves we are doing something good”, he chuckled. This is a sentiment echoed by many readers and supporters of Green Left Weekly. If the Australian lashes out at us in this way we must be an effective voice of dissent. It goes for us because, as the slanderous July 1 article, “A willing ally to Hamas's hatred” by Ilan Grapel explains, we are “Australia's best-known radical-left newspaper”.

As the blogsite “Murdoch’s Propagandists” , explains:

“Murdoch has a massive news and media organisation that is able to reach into every living room throughout the entire Western world – and beyond. Much of its so-called ‘news’ content is carefully designed to induce a particular bias toward a view that would be favourable to the view represented by the Murdoch propagandists.
“Murdoch has a long history of championing Israeli Zionists and their neoconservative supporters around the world providing them with a platform from which to present their propaganda.
“The vast majority of Murdoch’s editorial staff are hard right pro-Zionist individuals who ensure that very little gets through to their audience that is not favourable to their cause.”

Of course it is a David and Goliath type battle to take on opponents like the Murdoch empire. This year, even with the global recession, Murdoch’s News Corp declared a US$2.72 billion profit (compared with $2.69 billion) last year. Murdoch’s new second-in-command, Chase Carey, has been promised $US43.1 million in his first year alone, including $US10 million in cash just for signing on to the job.

Carey won’t have to worry about copping pain from the asset writedowns and restructuring costs that may flow from the meltdown of capitalism’s decades of speculative bubble blowing because his bonus depends on earnings-per-share gains excluding such charges. That’s what you get paid for systematically telling lies on a global scale for big business!

Meanwhile Green Left Weekly gets by with an annual Fighting Fund appeal for A$250,000. A lot of hard work by our supporters goes into raising this each year. Fund raising dinners, jumble sales, etc, are organised as well as the collection of donations. Through this sort of activity we have managed to raise $112,307 so far this year. If you can help us raise the rest, please make a donation today to our fighting fund at: Greenleft, Commonwealth Bank, BSB 062-006, Account No. 00901992. Otherwise, you can send a cheque or money order to PO Box 515, Broadway NSW 2007 or phone in a donation through on the toll-free line at 1800 634 206 (within Australia).