Rupert Murdoch helps COVID-19 killing people

This 10 July 2020 video from the USA says about itself:

Watching Fox News Coincides with Higher COVID-19 Death Rates | NowThis

Fox News contributes to COVID-19 spread, according to a recent academic study.

In US news and current events today, studies found Fox News viewership coincided with higher coronavirus mortality rates. In one study, infection and mortality rates were higher where Sean Hannity reached the largest audiences. People who listened to Hannity and conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh were also more likely to believe in rumors and conspiracy theories and less likely to take sanitary measures like hand washing. So how has this affected Fox’s most loyal viewer? Watch to find out.

TURNBULL SPEAKS OUT AGAINST MURDOCH Former [right-wing] Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull testified that Rupert Murdoch has done more to divide and damage America with the help of Donald Trump than Vladimir Putin has. The parliamentary hearing was prompted by a petition that was signed by half a million Australians calling for an investigation into Murdoch’s media empire. [HuffPost]

Pro-Big Business ‘centrism’ isn’t real centrism

This 19 September 2019 video from the USA says about itself:

Journalist Krystal Ball joins the show to talk about why centrism sucks, responding to Bill Maher’s Klobuchar for president suggestion, her time at MSNBC, and more.

From Our Revolution, the organisation of Senator Bernie Sanders in the USA, today:

Tell the media to stop using the word “centrist” to make pro-corporate policies seem more popular than they are!

One of the most toxic elements of our current media culture is the persistent misuse of the word “centrist” to refer to candidates who support unpopular pro-corporate policies.

Last year, New York Magazine published an article that used public opinion data to prove that what the media calls “centrism” is actually extreme, unpopular, and far from the “center” of public opinion.

But the media continues to actively misleading voters by referring to pro-corporate candidates and policies as “centrist.” With hatred and authoritarianism on the rise, voters deserve accurate information from the media.

Add your name here to demand that the media stop referring to pro-corporate candidates and positions as centrist!

The media needs to do better.

Their job is to inform voters so that we can make informed decisions about which candidate represents us.

Their misuse of the word centrist to refer to pro-corporate candidates like Joe Biden is intentionally misleading, and is designed to trick the audience into thinking that Biden‘s policies are more popular than they actually are.

Tell the media to focus on informing voters and stop intentionally misusing the word “centrist” to trick voters into accepting unpopular pro-corporate policies.

Onward,

The whole team at Our Revolution

CNN journalist Jimenez, arrested in Minneapolis, interviewed

This 29 May 2020 video from the USA says about itself:

CNN Reporter Omar Jimenez Speaks on Arrest While Reporting | NowThis

CNN reporter Omar Jimenez was arrested on live TV this morning while reporting on the protests in Minneapolis — listen to him reflect on the incident just hours later.

This 29 May 2020 video from the USA says about itself:

Minneapolis police arrest a black CNN reporter and his team on live television. John Iadarola and Ana Kasparian break it down on The Damage Report.

Not even CNN safe from Minneapolis police

This 29 May 2020 video from the USA says about itself:

Police arrest CNN correspondent Omar Jimenez and crew on live television

CNN’s Omar Jimenez was taken into police custody during a live broadcast at the site of the protests in Minneapolis, after clearly identifying himself to officers. Jimenez’s crew were also placed in handcuffs.

So, apparently, not even an establishment medium like CNN is safe from United States police denial of press freedom.

It reminds me of Ferguson, Missouri, USA after the police killing of Michael Brown. Police then attacked and arrested not just peaceful protesters; but mainstream media journalists as well.

This 29 May 2020 video about the USA says about itself:

CNN Reporter Omar Jimenez ARRESTED Live on Air Covering Minneapolis Protests

Earlier this morning, CNN reporter Omar Jimenez and his crew were arrested while covering the protests in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This is unacceptable, not only because people have a right to peacefully assemble, but because the arrest of journalists is a direct attack on democracy, freedom, and accountability for the powerful.

It should also be noted that Omar Jimenez is a black man, making his arrest even more questionable as white journalists haven’t been treated like this. Given that these events were sparked by the passing of George Floyd, this makes it all the more troubling

Talking about Minneapolis …

This 28 May 2020 video about the USA says about itself:

Amy Klobuchar FAILED to prosecute Derek Chauvin, cop who took George Floyd’s Life

We have an emerging story from Mintpress News and the Guardian that Amy Klobuchar, when she was a prosecutor in Minneapolis and Minnesota, failed to prosecute Derek Chauvin, cop who took George Floyd’s Life. As reported by the Guardian, Klobuchar systematically failed to hold police officers to account when they had interactions with black citizens. This included at least one incident from Derek Chauvin in 2006.

This should end Amy Klobuchar’s career, and should end her consideration to be Joe Biden‘s running mate for Vice President in 2020. She cannot be seen as a champion for justice and equality for black Americans.

This 29 May 2020 video about the USA says about itself:

The Far Right Wants To Turn Minnesota Into A War Zone

As Americans rise up against police terror, the far right has a horrible plan that could backfire on all of us…

Thom Hartmann reveals the white supremacist plans for to use the unrest in Minnesota after George Floyd’s murder by a police officer was caught on tape, sparking massive outrage.

Will the protesters be able to get justice for George Floyd or will this right-wing plan disrupt them and our democracy?

Protests rage across US over George Floyd’s death as Trump threatens ‘thugs’ with further state violence: here.

Coronavirus, kill for capitalism, Murdoch media say

This 16 March 2020 video from the USA says about itself:

Washington crisis response is already picking Wall Street over workers

Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti discuss what Washington should do to address the financial fallout from the coronavirus.

From the (conservative) Daily Mail in Britain, 5 April 2020:

Former Supreme Court Justice Jonathon Sumption believes that the public’s ‘irrational horror of death’ has lead to unnecessarily ‘costly’ measures surrounding coronavirus.

Writing in The Sunday Times

owned by Rupert Murdoch

Lord Sumption, 71, a former judge turned author and medieval historian, stated that the strict governmental measures will bring ‘even greater misfortunes of a different kind’.

He wrote: ‘We have acquired an irrational horror of death. Today death is the great obscenity, inevitable but somehow unnatural. In the midst of life, our ancestors lived with death, an everpresent fact that they understood and accommodated.’

Lord Sumption projects his own cavalier contempt for human lives, at least the lives of ‘proles‘, unto all people in history. While that contempt was mainly by tyrannical princes and their lackeys.

Today, Lord Sumption’s contempt for human lives was praised by the United States neo-nazi site Daily Stormer.

I much prefer to Lord Sumption these lines of 20th century Welsh poet Dylan Thomas:

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

All human lives are so much more precious than billionaires’ profits. They are worth fighting for.

The Daily Mail article continues:

Lord Sumption went on to list a number of historic epidemics such as bubonic plague,

The medieval plague, far from people ‘understanding’ it, as Lord Sumption claims, was a pretext for mass murder of Jews who supposedly had been to blame.

Does Lord Sumption see the possibility of the coronavirus crisis increasing anti-Semitism? Anti-Semitism, supported by His Lordship’s boss Rupert Murdoch, and by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News? While these coronavirus times see the promotion of anti-Asian racism by Sumption’s Rupert Murdoch media; and by United States president Donald Trump.

smallpox, cholera, typhoid, meningitis and Spanish flu, reminding people that such outbreaks with higher mortality rates were met with less ‘hysteria’. …

The former judge believes it is the public’s ‘risk-adverse’ attitude which has lead us to not accept ‘the wheel of fortune’.

‘Wheel of fortune’? No, the consequences of years of privatization and austerity in healthcare, and of an economic system destroying biodiversity and the environment, you idiot Lordship!

Lord Sumption said current government measures are inflicting suffering on other less obvious victims of the coronavirus, such as future generations who will be left to deal with ‘high levels of public and private debt’ …

So, Lord Sumption prefers millions of people dying to the ultimate ‘horror’ of Big Banking and similar creditors maybe not getting back their loans plus interest profit from debtors.

Lord Sumption and his Rupert Murdoch media bosses want people to die for Big Business; like Donald Trump in the USA and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil.

Rupert Murdoch Fox News anti-Asian coronavirus racism

This 13 March 2020 video from the USA says about itself:

[Rupert Murdoch‘s] Fox [News] can’t resist using racist coronavirus rhetoric

As coronavirus continues to spread through the U.S., resulting in the deaths of at least 33 people and threatening to topple many aspects of Americans’ daily lives, right-wing media is going against the advice of public health experts by trying to rebrand COVID-19 as the “Wuhan” or “Chinese” virus.

Read more here.

On March 10, President Trump retweeted a post from conservative political activist Charlie Kirk, who referred to the coronavirus (COVID-19) as the “China Virus.“ Kirk also exclaimed in his tweet, “Now, more than ever, we need the wall…the US stands a chance if we can get control of our borders.” Trump retweeted this and added the comment, “Going up fast. We need the wall more than ever”: here.

CNN reporter subjected to appalling anti-Asian slur: ‘I couldn’t believe it’: here.

LAWMAKERS UNVEIL RESOLUTION BLAMING CHINA FOR VIRUS A bipartisan pair of House lawmakers unveiled a resolution that blames China for causing a global pandemic and calls on the Chinese government to publicly declare that COVID-19 began there, a move that would almost certainly fuel President Donald Trump’s racist “Chinese virus” rhetoric and the recent uptick in attacks on Asian Americans. [HuffPost]

Britain: Teens arrested over ‘racist attack on Chinese people’: here.

Extreme right Rupert Murdoch Australian media monopoly

This April 2012 video about Britain says about itself:

Rupert Murdoch’s Political Influence

What really was the relationship between billionaire Rupert Murdoch and all those British Prime Ministers?

By Patrick O’Connor in Australia:

Murdoch’s News Corp shuts down Australian Associated Press

9 March 2020

Australian Associated Press (AAP) executives announced last Tuesday that the news agency will be closed on June 26. Majority AAP co-owners and media conglomerates News Corp Australia and Nine Entertainment triggered the shutdown to both slash costs and deny news content to rival newspapers and online news outlets.

AAP’s closure will further reduce the range of available news sources in Australia, which already has one of the most monopolised media industries in the world. The newswire service’s arbitrary shutdown at the hands of Murdoch’s News Corp and Nine underscores the corporate, right-wing domination of mainstream news.

Around 180 journalists and 400 other staff will lose their jobs. News Corp and Nine executives initially sought to attribute AAP’s closure to Facebook and Google’s distribution of free news content. AAP journalists were slashed by 10 percent in 2018 on this pretext. Last month, Nine chief executive Hugh Marks reported a 9 percent profit decline, at the same time declaring that cost-cutting had to proceed in divisions of the company that were not sufficiently profitable, including “big output deals like AAP.”

Last Thursday, however, the Guardian reported comments made by AAP chairman and News Corp executive Campbell Reid at an internal company meeting. He reportedly told news agency staff that “Nine and News Corp were tired of subsidising a breaking news service for their competitors” and that “News Corp would develop its own breaking news service.” He added that Murdoch’s company was “committed to the supply of breaking news,” but stated that “we don’t have to supply it for everybody else in Australia.”

These comments pointed to the strategic calculations underlying the AAP shutdown, centring on further extending the major media conglomerates’ domination of the market. No effort was made to sell off AAP or implement alternative corporate restructuring.

Murdoch’s News Corp controls more than 70 percent of the print media, a rate that places Australia among the worst five countries in the world for media diversity. Murdoch’s publications pump out a homogenous staple of right-wing politics, promoting anti-working class austerity measures, anti-refugee xenophobia, and other forms of reactionary nationalism.

Nine Entertainment is similarly a multi-billion dollar corporation with intimate ties to the political establishment. Former Liberal government treasurer Peter Costello serves as the company’s chairman. Its assets include the former Fairfax daily newspapers, the Sydney Morning Herald, Age, and Australian Financial Review, radio broadcaster Macquarie Media, various online publications, and the Nine Network, the highest rating free-to-air television station in the country.

AAP has been running since 1935. Its stories and photography are used by publications, including websites such as the Guardian Australia and the New Daily, television networks, radio stations, and regional newspapers. AAP provides 350 individual articles every day to its about 200 subscribers, as well as 300 domestic photos, 13,000 international photos, and 30 video reports.

New Daily managing director Paul Hamra reported that no effort was made by AAP’s owners to discuss options with the newswire’s subscribers, “such as increased syndication fees, restructured offerings or equity.” He added: “I get the impression News Corp and Nine just want to set up their own newswire service instead, with their own content, controlling more of the market and restricting access for new Australian journalism ventures.”

In addition to the sacking of around 180 AAP journalists and 100 contracted photographers, hundreds of others will lose their administrative positions. AAP also operates a profitable press release distribution arm, and a Pagemasters editorial production service, both of which are being closed down. …

The Liberal-National government, and the entire political establishment in Australia, is in fact a determined enemy of the people’s “right to know”.

Last week, Prime Minister Scott Morrison and opposition Labor leader Anthony Albanese shed a few crocodile tears in parliament over AAP’s demise. Morrison declared that the end of “such an important institution” was “a matter of real concern.” Albanese added that the closure of the newswire was “a tragedy for our democracy.”

This was hypocrisy of the highest order. Neither Morrison nor Albanese proposed to actually do anything to hinder the Murdoch-Nine destruction of AAP. Successive Labor and Liberal governments have dismantled previous provisions limiting monopoly control over the media, allowing a tiny number of corporate giants in the sector to accumulate enormous wealth and power.

More broadly, the last period has seen a bipartisan assault on journalism and freedom of the press in Australia. A raft of so-called national security laws has facilitated the prosecution of numerous whistleblowers, including through police state-style secret trials in which neither the defendant nor his or her alleged crimes can be publicly reported.

Last June, Australian Federal Police raided the national office of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation over its reports on brutal Australian military war crimes in Afghanistan, and News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst, because she reported plans to legalise internal surveillance by the Australian Signals Directorate spy agency.

The sharpest expression of the Australian ruling elite’s war on freedom of speech and freedom of journalism is its support for the attempted extradition to the United States of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, on bogus espionage charges. The entire Australian political establishment is implicated in the witch-hunt of Assange, which was triggered by his exposure of US war crimes in the Middle East and American diplomatic intrigue around the world. AAP journalists were among the minority of reporters to have written objective reports on the US-led ruthless pursuit of Assange.

News Corp and Nine executives no doubt hope to expand their dominance of the media by shutting down AAP. The longer-term effect, however, will be the continued discrediting of the mainstream media in the eyes of ordinary people and the increasing prominence of alternative, anti-establishment news outlets on the internet.

American TV journalist sacked for being socialist

This 27 February 2020 video from the USA is called Saagar Enjeti: ABC News reveals corporate control by silencing socialist journalist.

By Steve Sweeney in Britain:

Thursday, February 27, 2020

ABC journalist suspended after admitting he is a socialist

US TV channel ABC suspended a veteran journalist on Wednesday after he identified as a socialist in an undercover-video sting operation staged by a right-wing website.

Correspondent David Wright was heard criticising the network’s political coverage in heavily edited footage released by Project Veritas, an activist group that uses “hidden cameras to uncover supposed liberal bias …”

Project Veritas frequently targets trade unions and campaign organisations such as the Association for Community Organisations for Reform Now (Acorn), which was forced to dissolve after losing government funding.

The conservative group also targets mainstream news organisations and journalists. It has mounted unsuccessful sting operations against the Washington Post and CNN correspondent Abbie Boudreau.

In 2015, the Trump Foundation donated $10,000 (£7,765) to Project Veritas …

The group has been described as “right-wing disinformation outfit” in a work on propaganda in US politics by three Havard scholars.

Mr Wright was covering the New Hampshire primary when he was covertly filmed by a Project Veritas supporter.

In the footage released on Wednesday, he is heard complaining about the network’s political coverage, saying: “I feel terrible about it. I feel that the truth suffers, the voters are poorly informed.”

The ABC reporter also said that Donald Trump is given an easy ride, adding: “We don’t hold him to account” and referring to him as “the fucking president.”

But it was the admission he was a socialist that proved too much for ABC.

On being asked whether he was a democratic socialist, he replied: “Like, more than that, I consider myself a socialist”. He admitted supporting “national-health insurance”, “reining in corporations” and narrowing the wealth gap.

Announcing his suspension, an ABC statement said: “Any action that damages our reputation for fairness and impartiality or gives the appearance of compromising it harms ABC News and the individuals involved.

“David Wright has been suspended and, to avoid any possible appearance of bias, he will be reassigned away from political coverage when he returns.”

The action against him was widely condemned, including by James Poniewozik of the New York Times, who asked: “Would ‘I consider myself a capitalist’ be a suspendable offence at any news outlet?”

Radley Balko of the Washington Post commented: “The notion that journalists should never express opinions in private is absurd.”

Global warming Bezos’ Washington Post smears Sanders

This 26 February 2020 video from the USA is called Washington Post Desperate Smear: Bernie [Sanders] & Trump Both Deny Climate Change.

This is a half-truth, half blatant lie by the Washington Post.

The half about climate denialist President Donald Trump is true.

And yes, besides Trump, there is at least one (actually, more than one) other well-known person who is a climate crook.

That other person is not Senator Bernie Sanders. Sanders, who has a better plan against global warming than any of the other Democratic party presidential candidates.

That other person is the richest man in the world. He is Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post and of Amazon.

Bezos, unlike Trump, does not run around screaming openly that climate change is supposedly a hoax. But his business empire contributes massively to it. Bezos is up to his eyeballs immersed in Big Oil. Bezos promotes wars, major causes of climate change and other pollution. Bezos finances right-wing pseudoscientists and politicians who do the dirty climate denialist work for him. Bezos tries to oppress, silence and sack Amazon workers who strike and speak out against Bezos’ contributions to global warming.

US establishment smears Sanders as ‘Russian stooge’

This 25 February 2020 video from the USA is called Weak RussiaGate Nonsense Gets Used On Bernie.

By Patrick Martin in the USA:

24 February 2020

The victory of Bernie Sanders in the Nevada caucuses has escalated the anti-Sanders hysteria of the Democratic Party establishment and Democratic-aligned media outlets such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC. This has taken the form of fabricated allegations of Russian intervention into the 2020 elections to support Sanders’ candidacy.

This fable is elaborated on the front page of Sunday’s New York Times in a lengthy article by David Sanger, the newspaper’s most reliable stenographer for whatever story the military-intelligence apparatus wants floated in the newspaper. Under the headline, “Seeking Chaos, Moscow Places Its Bets in US,” Sanger smears Sanders as the beneficiary of supposed Russian support in the 2020 elections.

Sanger has a long record of fraudulent “analyses”. Stories that appear under his byline are generally based on unnamed intelligence sources whose allegations are presented as unimpeachable. The hallmark of a typical Sanger analysis is that it lacks any identifiable factual basis. He is less a reporter than a frustrated writer of third-rate spy stories with poorly constructed plots.

In this latest thriller, Sanger does not produce a single fact in support of the contention that Russian President Vladimir Putin backs Sanders or has done anything to assist his campaign.

Besides numerous unnamed “outside experts” and “intelligence analysts”, Sanger quotes three current and former intelligence officials by name, including Angela Stent, national intelligence officer for Russia, now a professor at Georgetown University and author of Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and With the Rest, who actually says nothing about Sanders.

Victoria Nuland is also cited. Nuland is certainly an expert on foreign subversion of elections, having played, as she boasted, a central role in 2014 in the $5 billion US effort to destabilize and oust the democratically elected government of Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine.

Nuland does not present any evidence to support Sanger’s storyline, beyond asserting, “Any figures that radicalize politics and do harm to center views and unity in the United States are good for Putin’s Russia.” In other words, Sanders is functioning as a Putin stooge because his policies are to the left of the Democratic Party candidates favored by the CIA.

Sanger finds the hand of Putin in Sanders’ support for “a drastic expansion of taxes and government programs like Medicare,” claiming that this divides American society in a way favorable to Moscow.

Also named by Sanger is Christopher Krebs, head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the Department of Homeland Security. Sanger cites his role in “documenting how Russian operatives are becoming stealthier, learning from the mistakes they made in 2016.” These Russki agents are so devilishly clever that they successfully conceal all traces of their insidious manipulation of American elections.

In Sanger’s make-believe world, the very absence of evidence of Russian interference is proof of their subversion. His storyline is a modern-day version of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anticommunist invocations of a “conspiracy so vast”.

No American is safe from Putin’s tentacles. Sanger claims that Russia is “feeding disinformation to unsuspecting Americans on Facebook and other social media.” He continues: “By seeding conspiracy theories and baseless claims on the platforms, Russians hope everyday Americans will retransmit those falsehoods from their own accounts.”

He concludes, with apparent regret over the existence of freedom of speech, “It is much harder to ban the words of real Americans, who may be parroting a Russian storyline, even unintentionally.”

The anti-Russia narrative has the most ominous implications for the democratic rights of the American people. The New York Times implies that any expression of social discontent in the United States, and, above all, the growing anger over mounting social inequality, can be delegitimized as “parroting a Russian storyline” and outlawed.

The claims by the intelligence agencies that Sanders is the beneficiary of Russian support have been taken up by leading figures in the Democratic Party establishment. Appearing on the ABC News Sunday interview program “This Week”, former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who served as chief of staff in the Obama White House, said that Sanders’ rise in the Democratic presidential contest was a case of Putin and Trump picking the weakest possible opponent in order to ensure Trump’s reelection.

These reactions are not merely the expression of the virulent hatred of socialism on the part of the Democratic leadership, even in the … version that Sanders advances under the label “democratic socialism”. A Sanders campaign, with its emphasis on economic inequality and appeals to popular hostility to billionaires and corporate America, would cut across the political agenda of the Democratic leadership.

The Democratic Party establishment has long wanted to conduct the 2020 election campaign against Trump as a continuation of the anti-Russia campaign that produced the Mueller Report and then the impeachment of Trump for delaying military aid to Ukraine for its war with Russia, which ended in his acquittal in the Senate. As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi never tires of repeating, “All roads lead to Russia.”

The Democratic Party wants to center the 2020 presidential campaign on the claim that Trump is an agent or stooge of Russian President Vladimir Putin and to present the Democrats as the defenders of “our” intelligence agencies and “our” diplomats and generals against the interference of Moscow in American politics.

In the event that such a campaign succeeded in ousting Trump, the result would be portrayed as a popular mandate for military escalation against Russia, as well as China, threatening the prospect of open warfare between the world’s main nuclear powers. Regardless of the outcome, however, a campaign focused on anti-Russian hysteria would serve to suppress the mounting social tensions in America and block any political expression of the seething anger in the working class.

The reaction of the party establishment to the rise of Sanders only underscores the central political reality that the Democratic Party is controlled by the intelligence agencies and the financial elites, not the millions who vote in primaries and caucuses.

BLADES OUT FOR BERNIE Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), now the clear front-runner in the race for the Democratic nomination, has continued to make gains with voters in South Carolina, especially among Black voters who make up nearly two-thirds of the party there. His Democratic rivals are expected to focus on Sanders at Tuesday’s primary debate in Charleston amid growing angst from the party establishment about a self-described democratic socialist being the nominee. [HuffPost]

JOE BIDEN’S LAST STAND Former Vice President Joe Biden badly needs a primary victory to keep alive his chances of winning the Democratic nomination, and his firewall state of South Carolina is finally heading to the polls this week. Biden once looked unassailable (with support as high as 46% at one point), but is now facing a competitive fight as other candidates in the race continue to make inroads with Black voters, his core constituency. [HuffPost]

Critics of Sanders repeat again and again that Trump cannot be beaten from his (Sanders’) all-too-leftist platform, and the main thing is to get rid of Trump. To this we should just answer that the true message hidden in this argument is: if the choice is between Trump and Sanders, we prefer Trump: here.