Fighting Fund

The mainstream media’s “impartial and balanced” fig leaves began to slip on January 31, revealing their corporate genitalia for all to see.

Australia’s richest person, billionaire mining magnate Gina Rinehart, had begun buying more shares in Fairfax Media, increasing her stake towards 15% and raising questions about media impartiality.

Fairfax journalists scrambled to report the news, tying themselves in knots over how much to admit about the corporate nature of their media outlets and whether Rinehart could have any influence on editorial input.

By now we all know that the rich get richer under capitalism. But many are astounded at the incredible pace this takes place.

Last week it was reported that Australian billionaire James Packer celebrated a 560% increase in his casino investment in Macau. Great reward for making totally unproductive, indeed socially and morally destructive, investments.

Happy New Year and thank you to all our supporters. You helped us raise $203,200 for our 2011 Fighting Fund. This is a great effort, even though we made only 81% of our target of $250,000.

The big upsurge in political activity — spurred on by the “Arab Spring” revolts and the Occupy and Indignado movements — probably meant that less activist time was available for fundraising. But it also made the Green Left project even more significant.

I will come straight to the point.

We are rapidly coming to the end of the year and we still need to raise $59,536 to meet Green Left Weekly’s $250,000 Fighting Fund target for the year.

Our supporters have raised $190,424 so far this year, but we need an extraordinary effort in the rest of November and December to make our target.

GLW is a people-powered independent media project. We go against the stream in a society where public debate is dominated by the slick, self-serving corporate media.

Tahrir (“Liberation”) Square in Cairo was the birthplace of hope for millions if not billions of people this year.

It was here that the Egyptian people launched a mighty democratic revolution. And it is where, in its second stage the Egyptian revolution once again has the attention of the world as the year draws to a close.

The Egyptian revolution was not the first charge of the new wave of Arab revolt, but it was the one that had the scale and power to topple a dictator, Hosni Mubarak, once believed to be unshakeable.

Nurses in Victoria are being threatened with an Alan Joyce-style lockout because they have campaigned for a modest 3.5% pay rise (just to keep up with the rising cost of living), superannuation and overtime improvements, and keeping patient-to-nurse ratios.

Australia’s four big banks, meanwhile, have announced a combined annual profit of $24.4 billion, up 12% from $21.7 billion a year ago.

This speaks volumes about the grossly distorted priorities in our society.

Alan Kohler, the editor in chief of Business Spectator and the finance presenter on the ABC News, was blunt about who was to blame for the Europe debt crisis in his November 2 opinion piece on the ABC's The Drum.

He said: “The debt crisis in Europe is the fault of bankers, yet the people are the ones who pay.

The ABC’s Q & A program on October 24 was the first to discuss the Occupy movement sweeping the world. Reportedly there are now occupations in 2200 cities. It revealed why the politicians that represent the richest 1% have no credibility any more.

This is the 900th issue of Green Left Weekly. We are very confident that we will get to the 1000th issue and beyond. We know we can continue to be the most-read environmental and left campaigning newspaper and website in Australia.

The fact that we reach this milestone amid a still-growing global movement of occupations against the tyranny of the world’s richest 1% goes some way to explaining our confidence.

For many Australians, Fairfax Media is a benign alternative to Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing media empire. Well-meaning people buy Fairfax newspapers such as the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age because they believe they present a fairer picture of the news. But just how fair is Fairfax?