OZ Press Council are insane re Eric Butler
[These notes are made on Saturday 25 and Sunday 26/8/12]
See my brief comments in a letter to editor hereunder as well as the three articles cognate to same as well.
Kindly note that what I write here may
appear to be obvious: but methinks others should have thought of it as well.
Or bothered to do something about it.
The reality is that I know NO - ONE who will bother!! And worse: I know few people who readily understand my scribbles! [Do not tempt me with an obvious rejoinder!]
Furthermore in the wider world, I ALSO doubt if anyone has taken hold of my tangent herein. Let us see The Australian on Monday 27/8.
It is not so that I think my intellect so exceptional: JUST THAT VERY FEW PEOPLE WITH POLITICAL, ANALYTICAL, PRACTICAL ACUMEN OR INTELLECT WILL BOTHER!
This is sad. Because our enemies intimidate the Press Council - and more! They are plainly, SO, SO motivated.
The above is merely one of the reasons why we loose the media debate in all forums.
AS an excuse of sorts - our 'best' are too busy in their work, scared of taking a public profile, simply lazy - or whatever.
It took me ages to cut - and - paste the articles below: never mind the commentary! I wonder sometimes if it is worth the effort!!!
Look at the visage of Eric Butler below.
Geoff Seidner
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Sent: Saturday, August 25, 2012 10:03 PM
Subject: OZ Press Council are insane re Eric
Butler
OZ Press Council are insane re Eric Butler
The Australian's
journalists deserve commendations for showing what the League Of Rights and The
Press Council stand for.
See three articles The
Australian 25/8
The PC’s idea that an opinion piece in effect has to take the form
of a debate in the first instance, is asinine.
Furthermore, with all hypothetical strained ideas needing equal
merit and space in a rebuttal by aggrieved parties - is
absurd.
Both are inimical
to common sense. Neither could / would be concocted if Julian - leftist - Disney of the Press Council ever
demonstrated an excess of the commodity.
So, in the headline Traitor
article 'failed to include key fact you have quaintly
demonstrated two great Julian errors in merely 7
words.
There are scores of non – sequiteurs littered
in the PC’s pronouncements.
Geoff
Seidner
13 Alston Gr
East St Kilda 3183
03 9525 9299
03 9525 9290
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Traitor article 'failed to include key fact'
NICK LEYS
From:The Australian
August 25, 2012 12:00AM
THE media watchdog has controversially ruled in favour of a complaint against The Weekend Australian's left-wing columnist Phillip Adams for neglecting irrefutable facts when describing a renowned peddler of race hate in Australia as a "traitor".
In the same adjudication, the Australian Press Council has dismissed a complaint against Adams for asserting his target, Eric Butler -- the now deceased founder of the right-wing League of Rights who was known for advocating, among other things, that the diaries of Anne Frank were a hoax -- was anti-Semitic.
APC chairman Julian Disney told The Weekend Australian the adjudication was an important one in terms of free speech, emphasising that the decision did not stop Adams from calling Butler a traitor.
In typical style, Adams wrote in his April 2011 column in The Weekend Australian Magazine that Butler was a "truly evil man" and "Australia's most virulent anti-Semite".
"If the word traitor means anything, Butler was a traitor, often investigated during World War II by stumblebum security people for his pro-Axis activities," Adams wrote.
"He argued that Churchill, Roosevelt and John Curtin were covert communists, that then ally the Soviet Union was a Jewish slave state rolled by international Jewish financiers in New York."
In a complaint to the APC, a friend of Butler and associate of the League of Rights, Nigel Jackson, said the description of Butler as a traitor was "inaccurate and deceitful" on the basis that he had served
with the Second Australian Imperial Force during World War II and had been found by the Reed board of inquiry into military offenders as "loyal to His Majesty the King".
Jackson wrote to the magazine with this complaint and a further one that challenged the claim that Butler was generally anti-Semitic. That letter was not published.
The APC decision recognised "the importance of free expression of opinion in columns of this kind" but upheld the first complaint on the basis that Adams had omitted to mention Butler's voluntary war record.
It found the "failure to mention something which is so crucially relevant to the allegation as his voluntary military service during that war, including a hazardous overseas posting, contravenes the council's principles against misrepresentation or suppression".
The complaint against Adams's assertion of Butler as anti-Semitic was dismissed.
"The supporting evidence for that allegation is very much stronger, and the contrary evidence is very much weaker, than in relation to the allegation of being a traitor to one's country in time of war."
The APC also ruled that The Weekend Australian should have published Mr Jackson's letter.
Professor Disney defended the adjudication and told The Weekend Australian that in the interests of free speech, it was "crucial" to recognise that the APC allowed Adams to call Butler a traitor.
"We have very specifically said Adams can call him a traitor but this irrefutable and highly relevant fact (about his service record) should have been mentioned," he said. "The word traitor is not the issue but (rather) the inclusion of a fact that would allow many people to think he wasn't.
"I would have thought it was obvious that the time when our principles are most important to apply is when someone is a seemingly particularly unattractive person.
"If someone thinks Butler is a particularly odious person, that is not the time to abandon our principles."
Professor Disney said the role of the APC was not to decide "who is right and who is wrong" but to decide if "an assertion is tenable".
"I don't want to get into a debate too much, but the Reed inquiry was done in the heat of war and drew a much more subtle distinction between being a real traitor and being of different views," he said.
"Being an active traitor in times of war is a very, very serious allegation. And many people of impeachable character have been differing in view to their country going into war."
Mr Jackson, a supporter of the League of Rights who first met Butler in 1964, told The Weekend Australian he had considered Butler a friend.
"I was indignant," he said of his reaction when he read Adams's column. "If you hear someone speak ill of someone you admire, you feel the need to defend that person."
He said he was pleased the complaint against Butler being a traitor had been upheld, "however, I feel disappointed over the way (the APC) handled my complaint about the accusation of Butler as an anti-Semite".
"No one likes to be called anti-Semitic in 2012; it is a social curse," he said. "The word means an irrational and negative attitude to Jews and as generally something to be hated, whereas it is obviously possible to be critical of Jewish activities in some conduct without being anti-Semitic in that way."
Mr Jackson said he would now submit an article about Butler to The Weekend Australian for publication and if it was rejected would publish it with the League of Rights.
Adams was unrepentant.
"I do not resile from what I wrote about Butler," he said.
"I think he was a traitor to his country during war, despite the fact he may have waved a gun around."
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www.theaustralian.com.au/.../story-e6frgd0x-1226457666931Share
19 hours ago – This disappointed Nigel Jackson, its author, who lodged a complaint with ... nor the Press Council - decide what appears in the publications they edit. ... Thecouncil disagrees; its reasoning is set out in the full adjudication on ...
blogs.news.com.au/.../the_press_council_has_no_business_tell...Share
The decision is odd enough, but why on earth is the Press Council even ... Left advocating greater media regulation, the Australian Press Council has ruled we must... The council adjudication says the complainant, Nigel Jackson, argued “the ...
blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/Share
He runs the most-read political blog in Australia and hosts Channel 10's The Bolt Report... The Press Council has no business telling Adams his opinion is wrong ... Thecouncil adjudication says the complainant, Nigel Jackson, argued “the ...
blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/andrewbolt/Share
He runs the most-read political blog in Australia and hosts Channel 10's The Bolt Report... The decision is odd enough, but why on earth is the Press Council even ... Thecouncil adjudication says the complainant, Nigel Jackson, argued “the ...
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Page 8 The Australian Sat. 25 Aug. 2012.. or
Press Council Adjudication: Nigel Jackson The Australian Page 8, 25/8/12
The Australian Press Council has considered a complaint by Nigel Jackson about a column by Phillip
Adams in the Weekend Australian Magazine on 9-10 April 2011. The column described the late Eric
Butler as having been a “truly evil man” and “Australia’s most virulent anti-Semite”. It also said: “If the
word ‘traitor’ means anything Butler was a traitor, often investigated during World War II by
stumblebum security people for his pro-Axis activities. He argued that Churchill, Roosevelt and John
Curtin were ‘covert communists’, that then ally the Soviet Union was a ‘Jewish slave state …
controlled by international Jewish financiers in New York'.” It also said that Mr Butler's "favourite
theme [was] the evils of the Jewish race".
Mr Jackson complained that the description of Mr Butler as a traitor was inaccurate and deceitful
because he served overseas in the Second AIF during the war and was one of a group of people
whom the Reed Board of Inquiry described in 1944 as “loyal to His Majesty the King” and “actuated by
a sincere desire to improve the lot of themselves and their fellow men”. Mr Jackson also complained
that Mr Butler’s views were inaccurately portrayed as primarily anti-Semitic when in reality they were
principally concerned with public service from a Christian orientation. Mr Jackson had expressed
these concerns in a letter to the editor of the magazine but it was not published.
The magazine responded that the columnist was entitled to express his opinions on these matters.
The assertion that Mr Butler was a traitor was based principally on the criticisms of Allied leaders
referred to in the column and to a wartime censor’s statement that “the activities of [Mr Butler] and his
assistants are being closely watched by the authorities. There is no doubt that the general trend of
their propaganda is damaging to the financial side of the war effort”. The magazine said that, while
"the evils of the Jewish race" may not have been Mr Butler's favourite theme, "it was at least one of
his favourites". The magazine said it published two letters which criticised aspects of the column but
constraints on space led it not to publish Mr Jackson’s letter.
The Council’s principles recognise the importance of free expression of opinion in columns of this
kind. They also emphasise, however, that “relevant facts must not be misrepresented or suppressed”.
This qualification is especially important where an allegation is of such grave misconduct as being a
traitor and it is emphasised that the term “traitor” is being used in its strictest sense (which it is
reasonable to interpret as meaning active treachery to one’s country in time of war). This contrasts
with its looser or more colloquial usage in relation, for example, to mere expressions of disagreement
with national policy or to acting against the interests of a particular person or group.
The Reed report distinguished carefully between expression of views which might weaken the war
effort and, on the other hand, being actively disloyal, subversive or traitorous to one’s country. It
concluded that a number of people, including Mr Butler, had engaged in the former type of activity
(albeit motivated to a considerable extent by economic theories which they considered to be in
Australia’s national interest). But, except for suspicions about one or two unnamed people, it explicitly
exonerated them from the latter type of conduct and in doing so specifically mentioned the active war
service of Mr Butler and other named people.
The Council has concluded that alleging Mr Butler was an active traitor to his country in time of war is
an expression of opinion which, even if highly debatable, does not in itself contravene the Council’s
principles. But failure to mention something which is so crucially relevant to the allegation as his
voluntary military service during that war, including a hazardous overseas posting, contravenes the
Council’s principles against misrepresentation or suppression. This applies especially in the absence
of endorsement for the allegation from the Reed report or other authoritative source. Accordingly, the
complaint about the column is upheld on that ground.
The Council’s conclusion is different, however, in relation to the assertion in the column about Mr
Butler's attitude towards "the Jewish race". By comparison with the allegation of being a traitor, these
assertions were inherently less specific and the complainant has not identified any irrefutable fact
which is of crucial significance to the truth or otherwise of the assertion. Accordingly, that aspect of
the complaint about the column itself is dismissed.
The Council has also concluded that the magazine should have published Mr Jackson's letter, which
provided cogent evidence in relation to serious allegations against Mr Butler. The two published
letters from other sources addressed aspects of the column which were unrelated to Mr Jackson’s
concerns and arguably were of substantially less gravity. His letter was not inappropriately long,
incoherent or intemperate. Accordingly, the complaint about failure to publish the letter is upheld.
Supplementary Note (not required to be published):
Unlike legal proceedings such as defamation, the purpose of the Council’s adjudication process is to express
views about appropriate standards of journalism, not to consider awarding financial compensation to people who
may have been damaged by some published material. Accordingly, the Council’s principles and processes apply
irrespective of whether published allegations relate to a living or deceased person.
Relevant Council Standards (not required for publication by the newspaper):
This adjudication applies part of General Principle 6: "Publications are free to advocate their own views and
publish the bylined opinions of others. Relevant facts should not be misrepresented or suppressed.”; and General
Principle No 3: "Where individuals or groups are a major focus of news reports or commentary, the publication
should ensure fairness and balance in the original article. Failing that, it should provide a reasonable and swift
opportunity for a balancing response in an appropriate section of the publication"
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An insult to the memory of many
CHRISTIAN KERR
From:The Australian
August 25, 2012 12:00AM
Eric Butler, the founder of the infamous League of Rights and one of Australia's most notorious peddlers of race-hate. Picture: Simon Schluter Source: The Australian
Now, in an adjudication that should give pause for thought to those on the Left advocating greater media regulation, the Australian Press Council has ruled we must not besmirch the blessed memory of our fellow travellers with Germany's wartime regime.
The council has upheld a complaint against Phillip Adams for last year in The Weekend Australian Magazine describing Eric Butler, the founder of the infamous League of Rights and one of Australia's most notorious peddlers of race-hate and conspiracy theories, as a "traitor" for his wartime activities.
"If the word 'traitor' means anything, Butler was a traitor," Adams wrote, "often investigated during World War II by stumble-bum security people for his pro-Axis activities. He argued that Churchill, Roosevelt and John Curtin were 'covert communists', that then ally the Soviet Union was 'a Jewish slave state . . . controlled by international Jewish financiers in New York'. And here we see his favourite theme. The evils of the Jewish race."
Butler, who died in 2006, did not form the League until 1946. Around that time he published what has been described as "the vilest anti-Semitic book ever issued in Australia", The International Jew -- The Truth About 'The Protocols of Zion'.
Jews obsessed Butler and the League. One of the books the organisation has been selling for decades (it's still available on their website), Anne Frank's Diary: a Hoax, accuses the best-known story of the Nazi holocaust of being "a preoccupation with the anus and excrement, a trait typical of many Jews".
Butler's writings from the war years and the period immediately before are just as disconcerting, if not as immediately disgusting. They create the clear impression he committed treason in the most classic sense by violating his allegiance to Australia by consciously aiding its enemies while undermining its own efforts in his work; and one who commits treason, betrays his country, its cause and its trust, is most certainly a traitor.
Not only that. His espousal of an aggressive Nazi-style anti-Semitism not only before and during World War II but after illustrates the extent of his betrayal of our national ideals.
Butler emerged into the public eye in 1938, aged only 21, as a
propagandist for the social credit movement, which enjoyed brief popularity in the Depression years by advocating the economic theory of a Scot, Major CH Douglas. He argued that national economic problems stemmed from a lack of purchasing power that could be solved by government price control and issuing "social credit", as opposed to bank credit, to consumers.
Ken Gott, a former journalist with The Australian, wrote in his classic 1965 study of Butler and the League, Voice of Hate, that Douglas "went on to equate bankers with so-called Jewish financiers and introduced a virulent anti-Semitic note into his writings. This was copied by his followers."
Butler wrote for the social credit movement's magazine, The New Times. According to Gott, The New Times, sold on news-stands, began recommending the notorious 19th century anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion that depicts a Jewish conspiracy to rule the world and enslave the gentiles, as early as 1934.
By the following year it was telling its readers the Nazis were being unfairly maligned and not to take reports of persecution of Jews in Germany seriously.
"The whole of the great international news, cable and propaganda services are either Jewish or Jewish controlled," it advised.
It spoke against urgings for Australia to admit Jewish refugees from Europe. "The Jew more than anyone else tends to be a monopolist," it warned.
This was the paper Butler joined and where he asked in the August 25, 1939, issue, as Hitler's threats to Poland made a clash with its treaty partners Britain and France inevitable: "Is Danzig worth the life of one Australian?"
Danzig -- now better known as the Polish port city of Gdansk, but then the centre of a semi-autonomous region coveted by the Nazis -- Butler argued, was "a German city with a German population", exactly the line being taken by the master of the Nazi propaganda machine, Joseph Goebbels, to justify the Fuehrer's claims.
Butler had already advised his readers that Winston Churchill -- and his great soldier ancestor the Duke of Marlborough -- were too close to the Jews.
As the war got under way, in December 1939, Butler told his readers: "The real enemy is not Hitler and Germany but the powers which control Britain and are working for the complete bolshevisation of the nation," a tacit reference to the Jews.
But he was more explicit in 1940 when he wrote: "A stream of Australian youth is leaving to be smashed to bloody pulp in the second war to 'save democracy', which like the first war, was fomented by Jewish International Finance, will be financed and controlled by the same group and will mean their undisputed world domination."
Unsurprisingly, Butler came to the attention of the Victorian publicity censor, Crayton Burns. In July 1940, Burns wrote: "I have taken steps to warn the provincial and country press that the activities of this gentleman and his assistants are being closely watched by the authorities. There is no doubt that the general trend of their propaganda is damaging to the financial side of the war effort."
By the end of 1941, the commonwealth chief publicity censor, EG Bonney, was also on to Butler. He banned a series of Butler's New Times articles and ordered all state censors to be on the lookout for attempts to reprint them. An October 1942 letter from Butler to John Curtin accusing the prime minister of "a treasonable financial policy" was duly noted too.
Not all of the file ASIO opened on Butler after its formation in 1949 has been declassified -- a sign of how seriously authorities in the post-war era regarded his activities -- but a wartime Security Service dossier on Butler from the same month as the letter noted: "In 1942, Butler was called up for military service and although this in no way curbed his political activities, it is felt that the entry of Japan into the war somewhat mitigated his morale-damaging writings, since the obvious affinity between his ideas and Nazism did not stretch to the point of welcoming an invasion of this country by the Japanese.
"The question of whether any action should be taken against Butler was recently discussed with officers of Military Intelligence," it continued, "and the decision was reached that, in view of the fact that Butler is reputed to be a good soldier and has very recently been posted to a forward battle station, which should effectively hamper his political activities, no action need be taken."
By 1944, The New Times and its supporters had come to the attention of the commonwealth attorney-general, HV Evatt. He set up an inquiry into their activities headed by South Australian Supreme Court judge Geoffrey Reed.
The council adjudication says the complainant, Nigel Jackson, argued "the description of Mr Butler as a traitor was inaccurate and deceitful because he served overseas in the Second AIF during the war and was one of a group of people whom the Reed Board of Inquiry described in 1944 as 'loyal to His Majesty the King' and 'actuated by a sincere desire to improve the lot of themselves and their fellow men'."
Yet Gott reports that Reed and his colleagues also noted "certain similarities in comment" between Butler's articles and the broadcasts on Nazi radio by Briton John Amery, who was hanged for treason in December 1945.
Author and historian David Bird, who earlier this year published Nazi Dreamtime, a history of Australian enthusiasts for Hitler's Germany, says it is "certainly" fair to call Butler a traitor.
He points not just to Butler's writings, but his proximity to the nationalist Australia First Movement. Its founder, Percy Stephensen, made its platform clear in his Fifty points of policy for an Australia First party after the war. Number six reads: "For national socialism; against international communism". No 15 goes: "For White Australia; against heterogeneity"; No 16: "For Aryanism; against Semitism" and No 33; "For responsible journalism; against 'freedom of the press'."
Stephensen and 15 other AFM members were interned in 1942.
"Eric Butler was never a formal member of the Australia First movement but he was recommended to that circle -- he was only in his 20s -- as an up-and-coming young man," Bird tells Inquirer. "He wasn't interned when they started interning them all in 1942. He wasn't interned because he wasn't a formal member of the organisation, but he expected to be. It was something that was extremely sensitive amongst people in the League of Rights circles that he was in any way associated with this group."
Bird says Butler's early mentor Arthur Vogan (who in the 1930s had declared: "We badly need something of a Hitler leader here today! Without persecution, of course") "clearly accepted and endorsed the Fifty Points and the fact that he recommended the young man to Stephensen suggests that Butler did so as well".
Bird adds: "There are people in the League of Rights who are quite adamant how unjustified it was to ever call Butler a traitor, but he was called a traitor at the time. And if you accept that these Australia First types and Nazi enthusiasts were traitors -- which is not the way they saw it -- but if you accept that they were -- and it was accepted at the time -- he most certainly was."
The evidence suggests the judgment of the council in prosecuting the Butler case needs to be questioned, let alone its ruling.
Let's not be beastly with the Germans continues: "Let's be free with them; And share the BBC with them."
This Press Council ruling should make Finkelstein fans stop and think just who they might be sharing their media with in a tighter regulated environment.
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ANYONE who has ever selected letters for publication can identify the ones to throw straight in the bin. Green ink is a good clue; all capital letters is another. Mention of the Jews' control of some aspect of world affairs is a reliable pointer, too, especially when couched in oh-so-reasonable terms.
Phillip Adams wrote a column last year in The Weekend Australian Magazine condemning Eric Butler as an anti-Semitic traitor. When I received a letter informing me (the editor at the time) that Butler was in fact not a traitor and merely "responsibly critical of the Zionist influence in international finance", I applied one of my filters and chose not to share it with the magazine's readers.
This disappointed Nigel Jackson, its author, who lodged a complaint with the Press Council, claiming my refusal to publish his letter was "irresponsible and unethical".
Perhaps I made the wrong decision, although I'd cheerfully make it again. But that is beside the point. It was my understanding that editors - not readers, nor the Press Council - decide what appears in the publications they edit. It's part of the job description.
The executive secretary of the council, Jack Herman, shared my view, telling Jackson: "Phillip Adams is entitled to his opinion, and the editor of The Weekend Australian Magazine was under no obligation to publish your letter." That, I thought, was the end of the matter.
But Jackson, not satisfied with the ruling, appealed directly to the council's chairman, Julian Disney. The council's complaints subcommittee then decided to consider another aspect of Jackson's complaint and asked if The Australian considered Adams's assertions about Butler were justified.
We replied at length, outlining some of the facts on which Adams relied (for more details, see Christian Kerr's analysis on this page). I told the subcommittee that I felt, given those facts, that Adams was entitled to deliver such a verdict on Butler.
"Traitor is a damning word to use about anyone," I wrote, "but a man who claims, in time of war, that the Allied leaders are communists, while engaging in activities contemporaneously described as damaging to the war effort, risks that level of opprobrium."
The council disagrees; its reasoning is set out in the full adjudication on page 8 of this newspaper.
But while it could have confined itself to declaring Adams's characterisation of Butler as unfair, it dispenses with the notion of editorial discretion to state (contrary to its initial position) that the magazine should have published Jackson's letter.
With this decision the council has set itself up as an appeals court for anyone who feels aggrieved that their views have been unjustly hidden from the world.
When the complaints start to pour in from every bigot, bore and lunatic in Australia, its members might have cause to regret their arrogation of the editor's role.
