Photos: Top left: Rupert Murdoch media mogul (World Economic Forum-Davos). Top Right: Paul Moran, ABC cameraman killed in Iraq in 2003. Boston Marathon Bombings courtesy of Aaron "tango" Tango - Wikipedia /Flicker
MURDOCH, MORAN AND BOSTON MARATHON BOMBS
by Sasha Uzunov
To some of us, who are not part of Australia's journalism in-club or clique, we are left to reach the conclusion that the Murdoch media (News Limited) can never please our country's self appointed cultural elite, who largely form the natural constituency of the ABC, SBS and Fairfax media groups, when it comes to reporting on the war on terror.
Two events connected to global terrorism show how News Limited is damned by our 'social betters' no matter what and, moreover, who in our country has a right to "freedom of speech." The two events are this month's Boston Marathon Bombings and last month the tenth anniversary of the killing of Australian cameraman Paul Moran by a terrorist bomb in Iraq.
The identity of the perpetrators of Boston Marathon bombings on 15 April 2013 was first met with caution by some in the media.
However, when the religion, Islam, of the two accused was revealed all hell erupted when News Limited's popular conservative columnist and blogger Andrew Bolt condemned The Age (Fairfax Melbourne newspaper):
"In fact, even after brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were identified and found to be - surprise! - Muslim, some still pretended not to notice or think it relevant.
'Muslim? Really? What an amazing coincidence.
'Probably meaningless.
'So in the more than 6000 words filed by The Age on its live coverage thread by 8.30am on Saturday, the word “Muslim” was used just once: “The brothers are Muslims believed to be of Chechen origin, but there is still no clear motive for the attack.”
'Uh huh."
Tim Blair of the Sydney Murdoch newspaper The Daily Telegraph took a sarcastic swipe at Australian Muslim intellectual Waleed Ally who wrote a piece in the Fairfax papers, as well as firing a broadside at the ABC's Jonathan Green.
Ok, most of you would be familiar with Bolt and Blair's anti-leftist shtick; that it's par for the course and according to our 'cultural elite' would be playing to the Murdoch right wing script.
But last month, was the tenth anniversary of the killing of controversial ABC cameraman Paul Moran. Colleague Eric Campbell, writing in the Walkley Magazine, Issue 75, April-June 2013, the official trade union publication of Australia's The Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance (Journalism section), expressed his disappointment at "still no justice for Paul Moran."
For the record TEAM UZUNOV is a proud paid up of member of the MEAA.
The Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance remembers Australian Broadcasting Corporation cameraman Paul Moran who was murdered by a suicide car bomb 10 years ago today while on assignment in Northern Iraq at the start of the 2003 invasion.
Paul, 39, had been filming a story with ABC correspondent Eric Campbell on Kurdish "peshmerga" guerrilla fighters in the village of Sayed Sadiq. He was filming some final images of a group of fighters when a car drove up next to the group, stopped and exploded, killing Paul instantly.
Iraqi terrorist group Ansar al Islam claimed responsibility for the attack. The group’s founder, Najmuddin Faraj Ahmad, also known as Mullah Krekar ordered the attack that killed Paul.
Krekar had lived in Norway as a refugee since 1991. In 2007 he openly taunted the Australian Government to come and get him.
Krekar is currently in prison in Norway on four counts of intimidation under aggravating circumstances and is due to be released in 2015. The Media Alliance continues to campaign for the extradition of Krekar from Norway to face possible war crimes charges under section 115 of the Criminal Code 1995 (Harming Australians).
TEAM UZUNOV has previously gone into enormous detail as to how well respected and award winning journalist Colin James of the Murdoch newspaper The Adelaide Advertiser went "off script" and began to investigate Moran's working background and connection to United States military and intelligence circles.
Surprisingly, James hit a wall at the ABC and those at Fairfax and SBS took some initial interest but then buried the story. You would think that our 'cultural elite' would have rejoiced at James examining the 'Great Satan' (America) and its murky involvement in the second Iraq War. But even the great John Pilger, who has made a fortune out of his anti-US imperialist shtick, has not even written a book or made a documentary on Moran.
Here were we republish the TEAM UZUNOV article, run on Online Opinion website
Wilkie or Wilkie not ask for an ABC inquiry?
by Sasha Uzunov - 14 September 2010.
Ex-Australian Army officer turned independent politician Andrew Wilkie is regarded as a brave man who resigned as an intelligence analyst over the 2003 Iraq War. He is now in a unique position as a member of the newly formed ALP-Green-Independents-federal coalition government to call for an inquiry into the controversial ABC TV camera man Paul Moran who was killed in Iraq.
Wilkie resigned as an analyst with the Office of National Assessment (ONA), an intelligence organisation that directly services Australia’s Prime Minister, disagreeing with claims made by the then Howard government about Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and the reasons for going to war.
One of those killed in that war was Paul Moran, who helped to publicise the WMD story, which we now know was a complete fabrication. Wilkie has the opportunity to press for a parliamentary inquiry into the ABC’s employment of Moran and possible conflict of interest.
Moran, 39, was killed on March 22, 2003 by a car bomb while covering the war in Northern Iraq for the tax payer funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC TV). He was an Adelaide-raised freelance cameraman who worked on and off for the ABC as well as US public relations firm Rendon, which had ties to the CIA and the Bush Administration.
Walkely Award winning Australian journalist, Mr Colin James, of the Adelaide Advertiser newspaper, was the first to break the story about Moran’s shadowy past when he attended Moran’s wake in Adelaide.
He talked to relatives who revealed that Moran had a James Bond other life.
“For a freelance cameraman, Moran sure had some incredible access to US State Department officials in Washington,” Mr James said. “How many freelancers get to play games of social tennis with US diplomats?”
Moran had worked for Rendon for more than a decade in places like the Middle East and Kosovo, pushing US government spin while doing freelance work for the ABC TV as a combat cameraman.
On November 17, 2005 prominent American journalist, academic and former US Navy intelligence analyst James Bamford wrote in the influential American magazine Rolling Stone a detailed account of Moran’s work with Rendon and its link to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and its selling of the Iraq War to the American public.
The controversy surrounding Moran stems from his exclusive story about an Iraqi defector who had knowledge about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction program. A Rendon colleague gave him the scoop which turned out to be false, but was a pretext for the US invasion of Iraq, according to Bamford.
The Australian cameraman also helped to set up a television station for the Iraqi National Congress (INC). The INC was established by the US as an opposition group to the Saddam Hussein regime.
In 2006 the then ABC’s Managing Director, Mr Russell Balding, was approached and asked if he would launch an internal inquiry into the Moran allegations. Mr Shane Wells, his spokesman, said there would be no comment. The Moran story remains a hot potato.
Feisty, tough Maltese-Australian journalist, Monica Attard, host of the ABC’s Media Watch, dared to criticise then ABC TV news boss Max Uechtritz in his refusal to answer questions about Moran.
The story was followed up by some parts of the media, but not by the ABC. It should have been. ("Death in Baghdad",Media Watch, April 14, 2003.)
The irony of all this is Uechtritz, now with Al Jazeera network, complained to The Age newspaper on June 30, 2003 about freedom of speech after coming under attack from the then Communications Minister, Senator Richard Alston, for alleged biased reporting by the ABC over the Iraq war.
“It is the duty of independent journalists in a robust democracy to question everything,” Uechtritz wrote. “The senator seems to think the media's duty in time of war is to fall meekly into line with the government of the day.”
Uechtritz was contacted at his Al Jazeera email address for comment on Moran but after many months there has been no response.
Last year, Sally Neighbour, a self-appointed national security expert who was employed as an ABC reporter while working for The Australian a commercially owned newspaper, ran a story about Moran without any reference to the CIA allegations and quoted fellow ABC journalist Mark Corcoran, a hugely respected journalist and genuine media tough guy who previously served in the Royal Australian Navy and super secret Defence Signals Directorate.
Neighbour wrote:
"Why has there been no investigation into the murder?" asks Mark Corcoran, presenter and veteran reporter with ABC TV's Foreign Correspondent program. "As of December 2009, I have still not seen any evidence of an investigation, either formally or informally, by any Australian official."
Mr Chris Warren, the Federal Secretary of the Media Entertainment Alliance of Australia (Australian Journalists Association) has asked Australia's Federal Attorney-General to investigate Najmuddin Faraj Ahmad, better known as Mullah Krekar, and his links to UN-listed terrorist organisation Ansar al-Islam, as the mastermind who allegedly ordered the car bomb that killed Moran..
The Moran case has been linked by some ABC reporters to the highly emotive Balibo Five, Australian-based newsmen and crew killed by Indonesian troops during the 1975 takeover of East Timor. But the Balibo Five had no links to a foreign intelligence agency and launching a war crimes trial against Mullah Krekar could backfire.
It could open up a can of worms. Under the Geneva Convention, journalists in war zones are afforded some protection as non-combatants. However:
Article 29 - A person can only be considered a spy when, acting clandestinely or on false pretences, he obtains or endeavours to obtain information in the zone of operations of a belligerent with the intention of communicating it to the hostile party.
Thus, soldiers not wearing a disguise who have penetrated into the zone of operations of the hostile army, for the purpose of obtaining information, are not considered spies. Similarly, the following are not considered spies: soldiers and civilians carrying out their mission openly, entrusted with the delivery of despatches intended either for their own army or for the enemy's army. To this class belong likewise persons sent in balloons for the purpose of carrying despatches and, generally, of maintaining communications between the different parts of an army or a territory.
The definition of a spy given in this Article remains completely valid since the Geneva Convention contains no similar provision. However, a spy is also a protected person in so far as he conforms to the definition given in Article 4 of the Fourth Convention. Under Article 5 of the Convention, the spy may nevertheless be deprived temporarily of certain rights, particularly the right of communication.
Article 30 - A spy taken in the act shall not be punished without previous trial.
Moran was “killed in action” by a car bomb; he was neither surrendering nor was he captured. The next question is do we prosecute enemy combatants who have killed Australian soldiers during the heat of battle, ranging from the Boer War to the present Afghanistan conflict?
Should we now ask that the Vietnamese communist government hand over the Viet Cong guerrillas and hard core NVA soldiers for prosecution over the 18 Australian soldiers killed in action during the legendary Battle of Long Tan in 1966?
Furthermore, critics call the Iraq War launched by the United States in 2003 “illegal”. Wilkie resigned from ONA because of his opposition to that war. Assuming that the Iraq war is illegal, does Moran’s involvement in “selling” that war which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of Iraqis as well as US/Coalition troops being killed, constitute a crime?
Under the Nuremberg Principles established in the wake of Nazi War Crimes Trial of 1946, Principle VI states:
The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:a)Crimes against peace:
(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).
If you believe that the Iraq War was justified, then Moran deserves to be honoured as a hero killed in action in the global war on terror; he should have been given a state funeral just like any other Australian soldier, police officer or intelligence operative killed in action in a warzone.
The irony is that if Eric Campbell, the ABC reporter who was wounded during the car bomb that killed Moran, had been the one killed, the case of a war crime for killing a journalist could be justified.
The Fairfax Press and SBS TV have been obsessed with the story of Australian Commandos involved in a botched raid that resulted in the unintentional killing of five Afghan civilians last year - but that is another story. Meanwhile, it would appear that Moran’s role in selling a war that has caused so much death and destruction has slipped under the radar. Attard was brave in airing on Media Watch the Moran story.
Wilkie has the power to call for an inquiry into Moran’s activities.
