US coverage of Murdochgate so far.

Someone in a comment thread on the Guardian website suggested the scandal be called Murdochgate and I think it fits rather well.

Rumour has it the NYT has a scoop on the phone hacking of 9/11 victims and their families that will break tomorrow. In which case it seems likely the story is about to become at least somewhat more prominent in the US. So pointing out this comparison Media Matters made of CNN, Fox and MSNBC's coverage of the issue seems rather timely.

Oh and courtesy of Jonny here is a sample of Fox News' coverage of the scandal:

Israel's reasonable response.

This is no about Obama's speech that he delivered yesterday, I may do a post collecting different people's analysis but I'm not sure, so often Obama has said a lot of pretty things and then done pretty much none of it. With a year and a half to go in his first term actions are more of an issue than slogans.

No instead we're looking at an OP-ED piece in the NYT that Jonny linked me to last night. This one. He framed it saying something along the lines of he was astounded at how audacious it was. As per my usual world weary act and a general numbness to Israel's free wheeling evil I dismissed this assertion and pointed out it was in the NYT afterall.

On reflection though I was wrong and Jonny was right, this is shocking and it is audacious. In writing, deliberately released just the day before Obama's big speech we have a senior member of Israel's ruling party openly advocating ethnic cleansing. To wit:

[following annexation of all remaining Palestinian territory] These Palestinians would not have the option to become Israeli citizens, therefore averting the threat to the Jewish and democratic status of Israel by a growing Palestinian population.

Now the Nazi comparisons are easy and unarguably apt but I'd instead like to compare this assertion to a hypothetical one made by a Serb, a member of Milosevic's party in the mid to late 90s. First with the Bosnians and then with Albanians in Kosovo you had a situation where Muslim ethnic groups were trying to break away from a violent and repressive regime. When they did violence and, in the case of the Bosnians, genocide occurred. But lets backtrack to when Bosnian and Kosovan independence was more talk than action, can one really imagine a Serb politician being given a platform in a major American and International Newspaper to threaten violent mass expulsion from what was then Yugoslavia?

One of course cannot. Yet Israel, useful tool of the Energy and Arms industries is allowed to have its' politicians issue outrageous threats against a repressed minority that is trying to assert its' statehood in a peaceful and democratic manner in line with international law and the UN charter. While the NYT editors temper circulation boosting Wikileaks revelations with descriptions of why Julian Assange is a poopy head they seem totally willing to print statements of intent regard massive breaches of international law that would bring misery to millions. Though to be fair to the NYT it is not like any of her rivals either domestic or foreign have thought it worthy of mention. Nor is there any political reaction, HAMAS is a dismissed as a negotiating partner because it refuses to recognise Israel as a nation state, yet Israel is being hailed as an ardent pursuer of peace in the aftermath of Obama's speech, and this unmentioned piece.

There is, I think, some hope to be drawn from this though. I am fairly sure if Israel actively pursued this policy they could annex all Palestinian land and drive them out. At the same time I think the US could win in Afghanistan if they used a few nukes. The fact is though that some victories are simply too costly to be pursued, in a world where Israel's image is consistently becoming murkier and European popular support for Palestine is growing rapidly and even in the US questions are starting to be asked Israel will suffer a great deal if they do this. Similar economic sanctions to those suffered by South Africa would likely be imposed by the EU.

Plus Israel is not a monolithic bloc, there is a sizeable minority of Israelis who would not stand for such an action, likely leading to considerable internal unrest.

Thus if the Israeli establishment is feeling forced to shift from a position of ever claiming to be the innocent victim to issuing threats such as this perhaps the plan to push for the recognition of Palestine as a sovereign state has some potential for the Palestinian cause.

Counter-revolution to the Arab Spring

Obama is delivering a speech about the Arab Spring today and it will most likely be just as full of lies as his 2009 speech in Cairo (worth bearing in mind how when he no doubt mentions in today's speech how awesome democracy how willing to give a speech in a client dictatorship he was two years ago.)

Thus I highly recommend Joseph Massad's editorial about how the Euro-American / Saudi counter-revolution to the Arab Spring is going and what it entails. Read it here and bear in mind how little this resembles the mainstream coverage of the region.

Iraq Reverting to Police State.

In The Shock Doctrine Naomi Klein convincingly shows that the US following the 2003 invasion had no desire for Iraq to become a democracy and it was only by mass protests (that the western media ignored) that the Iraqis got democratic elections. Well Iraqis have been doing mass protests throughout the Arab Spring, albeit for improved conditions and not regime change. Again the western media have studiously ignored it, Iraq is "liberated" and "democratic" so to report on protests would show how inaccurate all their previous reporting has been. Even more depressingly US trained Iraqi security forces are cracking down on the free press within the country.

It would seem that the US is attempting to make Iraq into the puppet dictatorship they always wanted it to be. Though to be fair as Chomsky pointed out the US will endeavour to return all the rebellious countries in the region to client dictatorships.

Britain is also not a democracy

Rupert Murdoch's Sunday newspaper The News of the World (a publication that challenges the World Series for the narrowest interpretation of "world") has been caught red handed hacking people's phones and has issued a public apology and offered payoffs specifically to those there is incontrovertible proof they hacked.

There are plenty of others with good cases and even some of those who've been offered bribes, including a Labour MP and former minister (political office, not God botherer), who may well not go for the deal. Indeed it seems the storm isn't breaking for News Corporation in the UK quite yet.

James Murdoch's elevation to No.3 in the hierarchy is interesting given the TV debates for the leaders of the three main parties before the election last year were his idea. The debates elevated Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, to an eminently popular figure and wholly undermined what had until then appeared to be an unopposed victory march for Murdoch vassal and friend of Rebekah Brooks; David Cameron. Sure the post debate surge didn't hold for the Lib Dems and the parliamentary party ended up merrily siding with the Conservatives to form a coalition government, betraying their grass roots and nearly everyone who'd voted for them at the first whiff of power but this was still a set back for the Conservatives and their patron Murdoch.

So why was he promoted? Well its difficult to choose a Mafia or Monarchy metaphor (hell they're both feudal dictatorships anyway) but essentially ol' Rupert has decided blood is thicker than water and getting his son to safety in a new country and new job, a new job that gives him considerable power over those who might reveal his misdeeds to British authorities, matters more than punishing him for accidentally allowing British politics to be opened up somewhat. Rebekah Brooks, renowned enforcer for the Murdoch family in the UK as the above article suggests, has not been given such a courtesy.

She may not be family but its hard to say she is any less influential and valuable to News Corp than James and indeed the pair were joined at the hip... even at less auspicious moments. Standing by the heir apparent during his fuckup garners no favours it seems.

News Corporation internal politics matter here because a king rushing his son out of his fiefdom does not imply supreme confidence the law can once again be ridden rough shod over. The reason for this seems to be the light of scrutiny. As is common with media magnates News Corporation has enjoyed considerable secrecy regarding its' affairs because of their power to set the agenda and its' general influence over media organisations. A line editor might want to work for a Murdoch paper, a reporter needs to keep their contacts and so on. The Phone Hacking controversy, at least to begin with, was a typical example of this.

A Charlie Brooker editorial from last September highlights this. While at that point the controversy had been rumbling on for a few months already coverage was muted and non-existent even in some non-Murdoch outlets. (Its still not worthy of attention in Murdoch outlets, my parents subscribe to The Times and in spite of the unprecedented Mea Culpa in the News of the World today there isn't a single mention of the story in The Times today). Coincidentally thats why I'm linking The Guardian so much here, they've just covered the issue more than most.

But it kept grinding on and because it affected MPs parliament kept on at it and slowly but surely its forced things out into the spotlight and this nullifies a lot of Murdoch's usual advantages. As the article points out the Metropolitan Police, who Brooks admits to giving payment, have thus far been wonderfully helpful to News Corp doing lax investigations that were sadly unable to turn up evidence that has now been admitted in the News of the World Mea Culpa. Going further back the Met and the News of the World have worked very closely together and with all that cooperation the Police gave one has to suspect that an understanding ear was given to any issues or problems the Met had regarding other news stories.

Now of course while having to face the select committee several times and public scrutiny increasing suddenly the Police are leaping into action. This will probably continue, with angry politicians and increasing public awareness they'll likely be forced to do their job for fear of facing actual punishment for their corrupt links to Murdoch.

Similarly the tremendous political influence Murdoch enjoys could be coming to bite him in the ass. Former prime minister Gordon Brown suspected he'd been hacked but failed to listen to a friendly warning from Rupert and lo and behold Murdoch switched his support to the Tories in the last election. Cameron was so "grateful" he even took on a Murdoch agent as his press secretary. Andy Coulson (the basis for "the fucker" Thick of it fans) who was an early sacrificial lamb to try and placate those who'd been hacked. With increasing unpopularity and general public unhappiness with Cameron allowing Murdoch to gain an increasing hold over the British media it is likely the conservatives, while in no way aiding the investigation, will be unable to do much to obstruct it either.

Thus it would seem News Corporation be in a fair bit of trouble in the UK at the minute with maybe even the potential for his BskyB deal to founder. This is however very much the stars coming into alignment and in the long term isn't likely a huge set back. Even if Rebekah Brooks is hung out to dry it will likely entail her being sacked and facing no criminal penalty. Then if she can survive the 6 months without a job without a heart attack or aneurysm she'll be parachuted into another powerful well paid position somewhere else in Murdoch's global empire. The elite know to look after loyal vassals, its simply a good investment.

Also in the wider world Murdoch's power is still doing just fine. There apparently exists on tape proof Fox News CEO Roger Ailes ordered a subordinate to lie to a criminal investigation. A felony. But of course this isn't getting any attention at all. Oh and not a particularly recent development but I did learn not too long ago that former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar is now a serving member of the News Corporation board of directors.

This investigation if anything just goes to show the tremendous power of the Murdoch family.

Weekend Watch 07/01/11

The excuse this time is me getting into twitter but thats irrelevant, excuses aren't good enough.

So anyway, here is part 3 of the power of nightmares:

BBC Newsman takes blaming the victim to a new low.

In essence a BBC News presenter accused a severely disabled man of provoking and posing a threat to the police and thus justifying them forcibly removing him from his wheelchair twice during a protest. Jody McIntyre stood up to the absurd questioning very well but jeez those questions should not have been asked by anyone with any kind of grasp of reality.



To better understand why this happened I suggest two older posts:

Firstly Noam Chomsky explaining to another BBC man of a very similar mode to the above asshole interviewer about the propaganda model. Note Andrew Marr's reactions and how that thinking might well lead to how Ben Brown behaved above.

Secondly Mark Ames' coverage of anti-IMF protests in 2000. Note the media reactions and behaviour to that situation and the inherent similarities.

A good day to bury bad news and Iranian Scientists.

On 9/11 New Labour spin doctor Jo Moore stated it was a "good day to bury bad news" which while an excellent idea in PR thinking it was very bad PR for her (she lost her job) when it became more widely known and the media and political opponents etc voiced hypocritical anger about it.

Personally I think it was a piece of timeless wisdom and it seems I'm not alone in that. With the ongoing Wikileaks diplomatic cable leak US or Israeli (ah but I repeat myself) intelligence officers have seen fit to try and murder two Iranian nuclear scientists with bombs in two separate incidents, succeeding in one case. The current leak provides excellent cover because as I said the documents that have been released take Iran having a nuclear weapons programme for granted and normalises this unproven scenario in the public mind. In which case murdering a scientist, if anyone notices, is easier to justify as necessary to keep the peace in the region or suchlike.

One should also note that Iran has killed none of the Israeli scientists involved in the wholly illegal Israeli nuclear weapons program but no one cares about that.

The leaked US cables.

Probably the best place for up to date information about this stuff is The Guardian's sub-website devoted specifically to the leaks.

Man theres a lot of fun stuff up there already, Arab puppets of the US want Iran nuked, The state department (CIA) spying on the leadership of the UN and sundry other unpleasant things.

Le Petit Nicholas and the journalists that wont shut up.

As well as his deeply unpopular pension policies and mini-pogroms French President Nicholas Sarkozy and his government are nursing a couple of major scandals. Firstly there is the Bettencourt affair essentially an allegation that Mr Sarkozy both in his campaign for the presidency and earlier on in his career received illegally large donations from a single donor. Secondly there is the accusation that Mr Sarkozy and others in the UMP (his party) received kickbacks from arms sales to Pakistan in the 90s. Mr Sarkozy and others implicated in these scandals have strenuously asserted their innocence.

Of course Nicholas did what any innocent man slandered and libelled by the media. He set the secret services on them. Oh and also accused journalists of being paedophiles for not revealing secret sources to the government, something which could be construed as a direct threat given the increased monitoring of journalists by the secret services. Further the French government is showing a fondness for the British way of doing things with a number of libel lawsuits threatened (but not yet carried out) against those who are investigating these scandals.

There have also been mysterious burglaries targeting those investigating the aforementioned journalists. Another blow to American Exceptionalism as Europe proves it can do COINTELPRO too.

It would seem that when the Propaganda Model fails supposedly and enlightened and freedom loving "democratic" governments in the west are more than willing to use harsher means to suppress the truth.

Zizek on the inevitable apocalyspe Capitalism is causing.

I will let Zizek speak for himself because his command of language and passion is far beyond my own. I do recommend you watch it though.

A shadowy group offers the UK govt £5 billion and a Tory Lord admits to the house he laundered lots of money for the IRA but this is not news.

Credit to Jonny on this one, he caught it on Reddit and then fact checked it on Hansard (the British government's official records).

The title is not hyperbole, the source of this stunning revelation is a tiny blog: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/11/conspiracy-theories.html and the relevant corroboration by hansard can be found here. I highly recommend you read this stuff but I'll give you a taster quote just in case you're too lazy to click links:

Lord James of Blackheath: Not into my pocket. My biggest terrorist client was the IRA and I am pleased to say that I managed to write off more than £1 billion of its money. I have also had extensive connections with north African terrorists, but that was of a far nastier nature, and I do not want to talk about that because it is still a security issue. I hasten to add that it is no good getting the police in, because I shall immediately call the Bank of England as my defence witness, given that it put me in to deal with these problems.

All credit to Charlie Stross for finding this out. Its good that hes getting a lot of traffic from Reddit but jeez its scary the mainstream media aren't covering this at all.

And now; some Propaganda Model news.

A hagiography was originally a biography of a saint listing all their positive virtues and painting them in the best light possible, subsequently it has come to mean a highly positive portrayal of a person, usually in print.

The propaganda model would suggest that if an event that is negative to US interests occurred and it could not safely be ignored then it will be belittled, diminished and "spun" to lessen its' impact on US policy as much as possible.

The Wikileaks document release last week was just such an event and I betcha can't guess what happened. It is consistently fascinating to me (though unsurprising) that the NYT is held up as an example of extremely liberal journalism when it is such an obvious and blatant establishment supporter. The reasons for things being such is simple and twofold: 1)It is to keep the Overton Window (do note the depressing fact right wing uber shill Glenn Beck has tried to co-opt the term just as he has tried to co-opt Martin Luther King's actions) in the very right wing place it is currently, American political discourse will stay right wing as long as people think what the NYT offer is in any way left wing. 2) To people who want to be left wing and suchlike but aren't that well informed (what with how subservient the US media is and all) will read the NYT and unknowingly consume right wing propaganda.

Glenn Greenwald while at no point referring to the propaganda model (Chomsky is Haraam in American mainsteam political discourse) does a very good job of showing how the reaction to this release of information by Wikileaks is a case study of just how the propaganda model works. Greenwald draws some solace from the fact people are questioning just how in the pentagon's pocket the NYT writers were and I suppose to an extent it is. But if nearly of ample evidence of just how blatantly Burns and his ilk lied about Iraq and Afghanistan is only now drawing some criticism rather than hair teared out outrage it would seem that the Propaganda Model is functioning well enough for the elite and US interests.

Dissent in the age of Obama.

Cindy Sheehan has a short editorial about the COINTELPRO-esque raids on peace activists last week.

Among other things she raises the interesting point that Obama is still portrayed as the good guy to most Americans and in the US media to the extent people can't really conceive of him being in charge of a regime that is doing plenty of evil things. In effect because of Obama the entire apparatus of US imperialism is more or less given a free pass.

Australia is racist as all hell.

I know I know, it is pretty shocking a country that had a whites only immigration policy until 1973 and still has one that is considered racist, that keeps the remnants of the Aboriginal peoples the British didn't kill in squalid camps in the wasteland no one else wants and then blames Aboriginal people for the outcomes of such treatment and then following a "remedy" to those problems by further punishing Aboriginal people and treating them as untermensch, all of which was imposed by the Australian military is Racist but there you go. I aim to shock.

In this fun and happy read one learns about the conditions of Aboriginal people, the indifference of white Australians to institutionalised racism and how a town was happy at the lenient punishment for a group of young white men who killed an Aboriginal man who stood up them driving their 4x4 at and otherwise harassing Aboriginal people. To be honest it makes me violently angry but thats not the way, the racists are always better armed and far far better at inhuman violence, a more community based solution is required. Though first white Australians need to acknowledge there is a problem to start with.

The legacy of the British Empire is quite a thing.

Russell Brand interview

Russell Brand is generally portrayed as a bawd but if you actually listen to what he has to say the fact he is a former drug and sex addict isn't relevant and in this interview he brings up the point that narratives about himself and everything else cloud the meaning at the heart of issues. He is a lot of other things but he is also someone who overcame considerable hardship and unpleasantness as a child to get to where he is, perhaps people should bear that in mind more than they do. I recommend you watch it. One odd thing I consistently notice is that he uses big words it sounds like he is using them for their own sake but they are always correct to the conversation and convey his meaning, I wonder if it is simply the Essex accent, have I been trained to assume certain accents make you thick?

As a reward for watching the interview (which to be honest was pretty rewarding in itself) here is Brand utterly destroying Murdoch's The Sun at a charity gala event for Amnesty International:

MLK's plagarism and lies by omission.

This article examines the mainstream in general and NYT in particular's favourite conspiracy denier Gerald Posner. Oh hes also a massive plagarist and a self proclaimed thieving cocksucker but now he is no long a "journalist" and instead works PR for some of Hamid Karazi's relatives including Ahmed Wali Karzai a drug lord on the CIA's payroll.

So really it would be quite a leap to assume his popular lone gunman theory books about the assassinations of JFK and MLK could in any way be deliberate pieces of propaganda supporting the US government's line on the issue!


Yet this is exactly what the article does!. It is quite convincing that this thieving cocksucker omitted evidence that calls into question his conclusion that the official story that James Earl Ray killed MLK was wholly correct. The author does a much better job of explaining it than I could so you should read it.

A fifth of Britons are homophobic.

Or at least that many are willing to admit they are in a poll, lets be honest the real number is probably higher. The BBC commissioned a survey to investigated the population's opinions of homosexuality on television and the results are broadly positive. I obviously can't comment on gay people's perceptions of TV but that they think portrayals are improving is a hopeful sign. If nothing else this shows the immense importance of culture in society.

Then again with the fifth of the population who are made uncomfortable by gay storylines maybe there are other causes. Good looking happy straight couples make me uncomfortable so alone...

Just in case you thought COINTELPRO had stopped...

Sure during the 2008 Republican National Convention we saw clear evidence of politically motivated suppression but that was under Bush, in spite of COINTELPRO officially ending in 1971 (lol), and with Obama in power everything is fine.

Of course not. This is part of a wider pattern of suppression of groups the US Government doesn't like, such as the judicial harassment of the guy who left water for Mexican immigrants. Sure it go overturned but after much stress and cost for him and a general discouragement to others who might consider offering basic humanitarian aid such as that. While the usual media disregard for these events is contributory probably the biggest problem in regards to these tactics is the widespread belief that law = morality and the general assumption that police are only honest servants of the people. With that mindset it is easy to just assume these suppression tactics were honest police work.

This culture of fear means good people fear to do anything and less well informed citizens think those trying to do good are criminal.

Cuba isn't giving up on communism.

There has been a lot of bluster over the past week about the reforms in Cuba being a sign of the end of communism. However it would seem instead that Cuba is realigning its' economic system to be more in line with Hugo Chavez's system of co-operative based local economic systems. Since Chavez receives plenty of slander and hatred from the US this isn't quite the victory of capitalism most journalists have been portraying it as. But the truth of this, as with the truth of how Cuba survived peak oil likely isn't of interest to the corporate media.