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Some Links And Open Thread
The Goldstone Chronicles – Roger Cohen, NYT
Six years ago I expected calls in the U.S. to Free Baluchistan. I was a bit early on that, but now Selig S. Harrison fulfilled my prediction even under the same title: Free Baluchistan.
Howard Dean endorses the Islamic-Marxist terror cult MEK
"Ashraf is part of a government-in-exile which is headed by Madame Maryam Rajavi. We should recognise the government-in-exile headed by Madame Rajavi," said Howard Dean, the former Democratic presidential candidate. "It is an outrage that the MEK remains on the terrorist list in the US. There is no legitimacy in this."
How much did they pay him?
One more reason not to travel to the U.S.: U.S. can conduct offsite searches of computers seized at borders, court rules – Computerworld
A long drought, a tornado and land erosion causing a sandstorm which then leads to a deadly 80 cars highway pile up. One probably would not expect such news from this country: Sandstorm kills eight in pile-up – Guardian
Is Rupert toast?
The examples are legion – Randolph Hearst’s latter years dressed up as docudrama Citizen Kane by a young Orson Welles, Beaverbrook who joined the english government while owning the means of production of its fishwraps was minister of production in his mate Churchill’s wartime cabinet, was so old and decrepit by that stage, fellow cabinet member Clement Attlee reckoned that ‘Churchill often listened to Beaverbrook’s advice but was too sensible to take it’.
Thompson, the ridiculous Maxwell, the list of media barons whose power became so immense they were incapable of retiring, so that old age and hubris made their once great triumphs into memorable disasters, is a long one and it is likely that R Murdoch, the bête noir of concerned citizens across this planet, has recently joined the list.
This wasn’t overnight, but it did happen as the shampoo ads would say.
When Murdoch made the crazy decision to hide the Times behind a paywall, most of us scratched our heads in disbelief. Sure it had worked (after a fashion) with the WSJ but that publication makes money for its subscribers, like englands Financial Times, its readership is made up of the relatively small segment of the population who rely on these journals to spread the same shared myths about the casinos they bet on.
If a player doesn’t know what the commonly held view on an issue is, for example if most players suddenly decide an increase in oil prices will be destructive to the larger economy after an extended period of saying the opposite while the gang has been collecting its vig, any player who doesn’t know this he could take a big hit. And when the mood reverts to normal after the shills on the hill have calmed the populace sufficiently, then that player is gonna cop a hiding again when he doesn’t hop aboard the clip everyone’s ticket express and buy long on the black stuff.
So, paying up for the WSJ or the FinTim has a point. (It also limits the spread of ‘sensitive information’ as most of us have found when we try to link to an economist, WSJ or FinTim exclusive).
Murdoch showed his old age when he tried to make The Times only available to subscribers. He is living in an old paradigm, where the sales of ereaders wasn’t running ahead of most other consumerist crap. He still imagines peeps value news as a commodity, despite all evidence to the contrary. Reading is fast becoming like listening to music or watching TV & movies, peeps are paying so much to eat sleep and shit that they expect those so-called luxuries to be free. If they aren’t then they are not interested in them. The guardian has an article called “Juggling the Times paywall numbers” (find it yerself I don’t link to grauniad stories) which argues quite cogently that although the Times has had a small increase in e subscribers at the the same period it lost many many print subscribers, it is much worse off than those news outlets which don’t charge.
Put simply the paywall media increase in rate of on-line readership is much lower than those outlets which charge nothing which is logical enough, But and this is a big but, (about the size of the execrably O Winfrey’s rear end) the Times e subscriptions are so low, much lower than the £8.70 a week the fishwrap charges for its hard copy (net return after distribution costs about £6 a week). The e subscription is £7.50 a month! or 25% of a hard copy subscription. A big chunk of that 7 quid will be going to the crooks at the failed apple monopoly. Unless there is a massive change in the readership paradigm, one that hasn’t occurred in other mediums e.g. Cd’s & TV, the times paywall is a failure.
Interesting to see the NYT solution to this problem, they committed to a paywall when they should have run a mile or 57 from it, but Sulzberger who has been showing signs of being past his use by date for years, has been adamant. The NYT model has been left full of holes. Presumably so the honest burghers will pay, and the rest of us especially those of us who believe paying for lies encourages lying, will chose not to pay and instead take one of the loopholes into it. The NYT will have persuaded themselves that as people become indoctrinated they will save the hassle and pay. Once again events with other media suggest the exact opposite.
But where was I? Thousands of words in and haven’t even got to the issue (that so fuckin typical of you Did) – That’s right the imminent demise of one R Murdoch.
Most MoA-ites are prolly like myself, not that keen on staying across the arcane world of english celebrity gossip, which is a good thing but it also means that unless they chanced across an (at the time) out of date NYT article on the travails of the lowest scummiest bottom feeder of the scummy english media, the dismally mis-named “News of the World”; they won’t be aware of the problems Murdoch has been having at the base of his empire and HQ of his corporation News Limited, england.
In a nutshell – reporters at the news of the world paid ‘private detectives’ to hack into celebrities answering service. When the celebrity was a chinless parasite who goes by the handle of Charlie Windsor, it all became too much for the police to ignore. The heir to the throne whined so much that Scotland Yuk were forced to set up a squad to investigate. They arrested one journo and one ‘private detective’ put a ring fence around the list of thousands of other ‘celebrities’ whose names appeared on accounts to the private detective agencies’ which had been doing the hacking, and copped a couple of cushy spots in News Limited for senior members of the Scotland Yuk ‘team’ to take up on retirement.
So the editor of NotW (should be NoWt) Andy Coulson resigned. A couple of years later Tory leader Cameron appointed Coulson as his ‘chief media spokesperson. That would have seemed an ideal appointment at the time Coulson had claimed he knew nothing of the activities of a single ‘rogue reporter’ and Coulson had lots of contacts on Fleet St. When one adds in the big favour Cameron was doing Murdoch because Coulson’s silence wouldn’t have been cheap, he was a Murdoch golden boy who needed a little bit of rehabilitation before climbing back onto the New Limited treadmill career ladder, taking on Coulson would have seen a big ‘win win’ for Cameron (do people still say ‘win win’? Sorry it has been so long since I’ve been near large enterprise endeavour my knowledge of the metaphors & jargon of these joints has become archaic).
This event gave the ‘telephone hacking scandal’ new legs so during the 2010 election campaign the rumours about Coulson’s involvement became so worrying for Rupert that, according to today’s guardian observer thingy
Rupert Murdoch used his political influence and contacts at the highest levels to try to get Labour MPs and peers to back away from investigations into phone hacking at the News of the World, a former minister in Gordon Brown’s government has told the Observer.
The ex-minister, who does not want to be named, says he is aware of evidence that Murdoch, the chairman of News Corporation, relayed messages to Brown last year via a third party, urging him to help take the political heat out of the row, which he felt was in danger of damaging his company.
Brown, who stepped down as prime minister after last May’s general election defeat for Labour, has refused to comment on the claim, but has not denied it. It is believed that contacts were made before he left No 10. The minister said: “What I know is that Murdoch got in touch with a good friend who then got in touch with Brown. The intention was to get him to cool things down. That is what I was told.” . . .
. . . Suggestions that Murdoch involved Tony Blair in a chain of phone calls that led to Brown have been denied by the former prime minister. A spokesman for Blair said the claim was “categorically untrue”, adding “no such calls ever took place”. The allegation will, however, add to concerns about the influence Murdoch wielded over key political figures at Westminster and in Downing Street.
So rupert’s favourite english ‘rent boy’ tony bliar, was harassing PM G Brown, a man who had his fading days spent trying to plug more holes with less fingers than cloggie Hans whathisname The Hero of Haarlem about easing up on one of the few ‘negatives’ they had on Cameron! Pretty typical stuff for the bliar once he could no longer lead labour he had no further use for the party.
The new pm had no such requirement for the bliar to act as a go between Cameron & murdoch. This was even after Coulson got ‘the flick’ to minimise ’embarassment’ when the news ltd execs flew in to button down their takeover of all england’s pay tv stations.
This weeks edition of england’s New Statesman features an article by Hugh Grant yes that Hugh Grant, the bloke whose career got screwed after he got apprehended in flagrante copping a BJ from a hollywood hooker. Anyway I have revised my opinion of Grant who after all has every reason to hold the gutter press in low esteem – he got his own back by bugging a conversation with News ltd’s Paul McMullan about his voicemail being hacked. The tape contains some priceless gems including this piece from the guardian. (the new statesman is still a printed fishwrap they do a pdf but only sell 12 month subscriptions to it and I’m not forking out $70 for one article):
“But it was McMullan’s asides about Rebekah Brooks, one of the most powerful people in the UK media landscape, that provided Grant’s article with its juiciest vignettes. The surprisingly guileless McMullan, unaware he was being recorded by the Four Weddings star, painted a picture of the chief executive of News International, owner of the NoW, as a kingmaker to whom Cameron owed much of his success.
Cameron and Brooks have homes near to each other in the Cotswolds and, according to McMullan, go horse riding together. “They’re all mates together,” McMullan explained. “Cameron is very much in debt to Rebekah … for helping him not quite win the election.””
Anyway Coulson’s appointment became the gift that kept on giving for more credible opponents of the tory neo-liberal agenda than england’s clapped out and corrupt labour party. Pretty soon some of the few celebrities who had been named in the original Scotland Yuk investigation filed lawsuits against News of the World. Initially News ltd moved quickly to settle and shut them down, this drove the asking price up much further once those erstwhile advocates of fair play, england’s lawyers /cynic, worked out that murdoch et al would pay big to avert the discovery process stage of a lawsuit which would turn up a lot more evidence of a lot more hacking. Natch their shredders had been going flat out like a lizard drinking since before the announcement of Coulson’s appointment, but the initial Scotland Yuk investigation had grabbed mobs of paperwork which may have been ignored, sure, but it was still gathering dust up there in bullshit castle (the average street coppers name for ‘new’ scotland yard) long after the members of the enquiry had taken up their senior security positions at news ltd.
Once that word leaked, Cameron was put under incredible pressure to appoint a commission of inquiry to look at the original investigation. To make matters worse this blew up right in the middle of Cameron’s move to pay rupe off for his assistance in nearly winning the last election. news ltd was about to be given special dispensation to buy up the rest of england’s pay tv network that he didn’t already own. rupe showed his faltering ability here. In the past he has deftly walked the fine line between ‘encouraging’ politicians to place his needs ahead of the needs of the voters, without backing the politician into such a tight corner that Murdoch’s value becomes outweighed by his ‘negatives’. He had agreed to allow Cameron to dismiss Coulson , sure, but his determination to proceed with the takeover of bskyb while the disasters of Cameron’s relationship with a corrupt murdoch employee is still simmering, shows us that murdoch’s nimble acuity of old seems to be faltering.
Cameron is in a spot that will cost him his gig, he is probably too gutless to tell murdoch to fuck off, but if he allows the deal to go through he will have destroyed is reputation with the voters who win elections (those who go by the lies in the media and vote as instructed) for all time. However much murdoch tries to help cameron, he will make things worse & it will back fire. It is simply too much for even those simpletons to go along with, they have seen what goes on behind the curtain & don’t like it.
Rebekah Brooks nee Wade is meant to be one of Murdoch’s great white hopes but her handling of this issue has been every bit as ill-judged and clumsy as any of the snares that have brought the various murdoch children undone whenever they have been given the time & space to fuck up.
Indeed it seems that those who follow close behind murdoch suffer from the usual disease that those who sidle up to major leaders have. murdoch doesn’t want to let go until he is ready to. Consequently his coterie is stuffed with ‘yes people’ who don’t challenge him. Their only attribute is their ruthlessness towards anyone who could be deemed an obstacle to the endeavour of sidling up to rupe, they have no conscience, little personality and a one track mind – to be number 2. Meanwhile rupe, who has been entertaining himself like the psychopath he is by watching his children melee with some of the nastiest assholes to take up capitalism, has left his succession far too late to fix. When he goes so will the evil enterprise he has nurtured his entire adult existence.
Prolly nothing to cheer about what comes next will likely be worse. My best guess is that his replacement as emperor of monopolised media mendacity will be some self styled start-up who bought one of the ‘privatised’ east european media monopolies. Perhaps Alexander Lebedev but maybe he is already too old to become ‘king of the world’.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Apr 10 2011 4:47 utc | 15
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