News of the Week

By Distributorcap

While the dog days of summer doldrums may be arriving early on the east coast in the form of a record 104 degree temperature in New York's Central Park, the rest of the world continues to plunge into insanity at its own record pace.

Insane congresswoman (and someone who has passed NO legislation and has NEVER governed anything) continues her 2012 presidential campaign in the Corn Belt.

Amy Winehouse: RIP.

Boner and Obama, the last of the foot stomping whiners, continue to soak up local color by battling for control of the whine vat.

Governor Rick Perry consults with his mentor about a potential run for the 2012 Republican nomination.

News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch proved one too many people has skied over this mogul when he testified in front of the British Parliament and basically told the world "he knew nothing."

Marcus Bachmann and one of his most famous ex-gays figure they could make a few extra bucks pitching for Abercrombie & Fitch.

Even in jaded NYC, the street vendors realized that they should beware of Greeks bearing coffee cups.

Social media: yer doin' it rong

By Carl 

Did you know there was a Republican presidential debate last night?

Don't bother looking for repeats of it on CNN or video on YouTube. 

It was held on Twitter:

Now there's the @140townhall, hosted by the Tea Party, for a few hapless GOP 2012 candidates. 

I don't think enough attention has been paid to how terrible, asinine and embarrassing it was. It was almost funny. The only way it could possibly have been worse would have been if Romney had showed up.

To give you an idea of the level of discourse, which you can read in less time than it took the candidates to misstype, Bachmann's opening statement begins as follows: "TY for this forum. I'm running 4 POTUS 2 bring the voice of the people back to DC."

How... dignified.

Now, in truth, Twitter may be the best venue for the GOP to debate issues: 140 characters means you can't explain anything, you can't easily obfuscate, and you have to create bumper sticker answers on the fly.

Plus, as I often say, Twitter is for twits. This is perfect!

Except what's the point of having an exchange like that if no one knows about it? What's the point of having a debate if it's going to become a muddled mess of snappy answers that you can't even really be certain thread to the other participants?

You might as well ask Dickie Goodman to sample the candidates' position papers and create a "debate" that way.

This points up the contrast in how social media is used by both parties.

The blogosphere/Blogtopia (© Skippy, The Bush Kangaroo) is well-established and -- as conservatives are wont to do -- pretty bipartisanly effective well after the blog-world lost its uniqueness.

Facebook is similarly fairly familiar now, and conservatives have made inroads there as well. Sarah Palin's Facebook page is among the most popularly and most carefully watched pages on the site.

This is a far cry from not too long ago, when Rupert Murdoch purchased MySpace as an attempt to "Fox News" social media, thus abandoning hundreds of conservatives to a lonely outpost on the edges of the cybergalaxy.

Now we have Twitter. Twitter is great for alerting people: you need a quick fundraising hit, or an urgent policy announcement, you link to it on Twitter and it gets around. Twitter is great for a wiseass like me (even though I don't tweet) who can snap off one-liners.

Twitter is not great for a dialogue. And therein lies the problem for the Republicans. They bring a rubber band to a knife fight.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

It may be safe to say this

By Carl

Rupert Murdoch runs a gangland empire: 

The lawyer for Rebekah Brooks, who was arrested Sunday in the burgeoning British phone hacking scandal, says she is not guilty of any crime and that police will have to "give an account of their actions" in taking her into custody, the BBC reports.

Brooks, who resigned last week as CEO of News International, the British arm of the Rupert Murdoch media empire, was editor of the tabloid News of the World when the most sensational phone hacking incidents allegedly occurred. The 168-year-old paper was shut down last week by Murdoch in an effort to put the scandal to rest. 

The scandal also includes allegations that the newspaper hacking the phones of 9/11 victims and British soldiers killed in action, as well as paid police for tips. 

Sir Paul Stephenson, head of Scotland Yard, resigned his post Sunday, but denied any involvement in payment for police or in curbing the initial police investigation into the hacking cases. 

It would not surprise me if the attorney's name turned out to be Bruce Cutler. Or Baghdad Bob. 

The dance that News International has tried to execute, having Rupert Murdoch come in and profess undying loyalty to Brooks while handing her the stabbing sword to fall on, has all the earmarks of a gangland rubout, minus the bloody, bullet-riddled corpse. Michael Corleone could not have orchestrated a more wide-ranging hit, taking down a 168-year-old newspaper, a chief of Scotland Yard and potentially a prime minister (who has called for a special session of Parliament to explain his involvement and to answer queries.)

Intriguing. Usually, it's sex scandals that create this much uproar.

Side note: You have to love a country that has a "Serious Fraud Office," an independent government agency that protects the public from "extensive, deliberate criminal deception which could threaten public confidence in the financial system." They may take up this case as early as today.

This story is developing much faster than even I, a dyed-in-the-wool Murdoch hater, could possibly have dreamed it would. While it's sad that Scotland Yard has lost a public face that has been both soothing and authoritative, if Stephenson is involved in this business then clearly he was as fraudulent as FOX "News" is and this scandal calls into account the doings of the entire department since at least 2002 and possibly earlier.

After all, it may just be coincidence that as Stephenson hired a former editor of The Sun, the initial investigation into the phone hackings went away, but it bears investigating to be certain. Likely, this investigation will create problems for the Metro police. It's not hard to see a direct line from Stephenson's office to the offices of News International.

Anymore than it's possible to see the potential of a mole in Prime Minister Cameron's office, too.

And then given the cozy relationship between the Bush administration and FOX News here in the States.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Will Fox News pay a price for Murdoch's fall?

By Richard K. Barry

Perhaps not surprisingly, Media Matters is paying close attention to how much or, we should say, how little coverage Fox News is giving to the News Corp. phone-hacking scandal in England.

Media Matters has for some time been doing a splendid job of monitoring the pathetically biased news coverage over at Fox, so they must have been salivating at the opportunity to track how obvious Fox would be in low-keying the scandal enveloping its parent company, News Corp., and owner, Rupert Murdoch.

According to Media Matters:

Over a nine-day period from July 4 through July 13, Fox produced 30 segments on the crisis, as opposed to 71 for MSNBC and 109 for CNN.

Okay, that's sort of interesting, but clear evidence that Fox News under-reports facts that are inconsistent with its wacky hyper-right wing world view is hardly earth-shattering. Just more of the same.

Hate to say it, but Americans, especially the right-wing variety, are just not going to pay all that much attention to what goes on on the other side of the pond. If the matter remained in England, that might have been the end of it, as least regarding Murdoch's fortunes here.

But, as they say, this story might have legs. According to CNN:

The FBI has launched an investigation into Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. after a report that employees or associates may have attempted to hack into phone conversations and voice mail of September 11 survivors, victims and their families, a federal law enforcement source told CNN Thursday.

Just to be clear, it appears that the investigation of possible hacking of 9/11 victims' and their families' phones is an extension of the Murdoch owned British newspaper scandal having to do with accusations that its reporters illegally eavesdropped on the phone messages of murder and terrorist victims, politicians and celebrities.

The accusations would appear not to involve Murdoch owned entities in the U.S.

Nonetheless, that does beg a very interesting question. What would the repercussions be, if any, for News Corp. properties like Fox News and The Wall Street Journal if it is found out that 9/11 victims had their phones tapped by employees of the Rupert Murdoch media empire?

Clearly, News of the World, which bore the brunt of the scandal in England, decided to shut down rather than die a slow death at the hands of mortified advertisers who decided that the newspaper was just too toxic.

9/11 has for so long been such an important part of the way that Fox News in particular has draped itself in the American flag, that evidence that the parent company was violating the privacy of the victims and their families in such a dramatic way might just be too difficult a fact to spin away, or ignore away (see above).

Might people start to tune out or, better yet, advertisers start to walk away?

We can only hope, but it will be interesting to see.

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost.)

Peter King joins others on Capitol Hill in calling for investigation of Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. over hacking scandal

By Michael J.W. Stickings

To say the least, I've been awfully critical of New York Rep. Peter King (not that Peter King, of course, that Peter King, otherwise known as "Pete").

But -- credit where credit is due:

New York Republican Pete King is calling on the FBI to investigate whether Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation hacked into the voicemail accounts of Sept. 11 victims, calling the allegations of the scandal "disgraceful."

"As I see it, I would expect more things to be coming out over the next several weeks," King told POLITICO. "And as we approach 9/11, the tenth anniversary, it’s even going to get worse."

King said in the letter, addressed to FBI Director Robert Mueller, that the journalists should face felony charges if the allegations are proven true.

"It is revolting to imagine that members of the media would seek to compromise the integrity of a public official for financial gain in the pursuit of yellow journalism," wrote King, who is also chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

A number of Democratic senators are also calling for inquiries into the scandal. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) is calling on Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va.), who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee, asked for an investigation on Tuesday into whether American phones were hacked by News Corp. reporters. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) says she supports Rockefeller. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J) wants authorities to look into allegations that News of the World reporters bribed London police for information about the British royal family.

The Daily Mirror in London reported that News of the World journalists tried to get phone data involving the victims of the terror attacks.

For King, of course, this is all about 9/11. Like Giuliani, he tends to fetishize the tragedy. If this were just about hacking in the U.K., he likely wouldn't care. But perhaps that doesn't matter. As a New York Congressman, his responsibility is to look out for his constituents, not to worry about matters across the pond (except when he's supporting the IRA, of course). And that's just what he's doing. In this case, his typically self-interested and partisan political agenda just happens to coincide with the common good, as rare as that is.

So let there be a rigorous and vigorous investigation. Peter King, and every other American, has every reason to demand one.

The staggering implications

By Carl 

I want to speculate a little here, and in so doing put a little perspective on why this story seems to have legs: 

LONDON — Prime Minister David Cameron offered details for the first time on Wednesday of a broad inquiry into the relationships between the police, politicians and the press in the broadening scandal confronting Rupert Murdoch’s media empire in Britain.

Speaking to Parliament, Mr. Cameron said the inquiry would be led by a senior judge, Lord Justice Leveson, and would have the power to summon witnesses to testify under oath. The announcement came as Mr. Cameron fought to recover the initiative in a scandal that has turned into potentially the most damaging crisis of his time in office.

Mr. Cameron’s Conservative Party took power in May 2010, supported by some of the newspapers in Mr. Murdoch’s British stable, and his critics said that he, like some of his predecessors in 10 Downing Street, sought to maintain that support even as the phone hacking scandal erupted last week. 

Keep in mind that Cameron hired a former editor at News Of The World, Andy Coulson, as his (now former) director of communications. Keep in mind too that former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has alleged that he was a subject of inappropriate investigation by another Murdoch paper, The Sunday Times by "known criminals," as he put it. It's not a stretch to suggest that Brown himself may have had his phones and voicemails hacked.

Let that sink in a moment: the Conservative Cameron won election to the Prime Minister post in a bare plurality, falling 20 seats short of a clear majority, and needing to meld a coalition government with the Liberal Democratic Party of Nick Clegg. The Labor Party lost a staggering 91 seats in that 2010 election.

It's not inconceivable, although I'd be skeptical of drawing this conclusion without better evidence than Brown's say-so, that Murdoch basically overthrew democracy and installed a puppet in Cameron. His organization could have hacked any number of phones (they've shown a particularly morbid curiousity with the technology,) and uncovered any number of campaign strategies.

There are allegations by London's Metropolitan Police from as early as 2006 that the Royal Family's voicemails had been eavesdropped on, and continuing allegations have been made by various people that they too were targeted.

And that's just voicemails. Cell phones have been notoriously easy to eavesdrop on, using various hard-, soft- and fleshware (bystanders overhearing conversations.) E-mail interceptions are not out of the question either, if you presume that Murdoch's empire was basically an organized crime syndicate.

And going with that theme, it's easy to see that the same things might have happened here, assuming they happened at all.

Keep in mind that this entire story came out only because 13 year old Milly Dowler was found dead, despite the fact that her voicemail box never was full and her family and friends called constantly and left messages in the hopes she was alive and would call as soon as she could. The hackers, private investigators, clumsily deleted voicemail messages to the missing girl, unintentionally giving false hope to the family and destroying potential evidence for the police.

This was in 2002. Is it a stretch to think that, for at least ten years, Murdoch has committed similar crimes and obstructions of justice world-wide?

Perhaps even in a national election like, say, Bush-Kerry in 2004?

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

This day in history - July 8, 1889: The first issue of The Wall Street Journal is published

By Richard K. Barry

The Wall Street Journal is the largest newspaper in the United States by circulation and, sadly, since 2007 owned by the Rupert Murdoch news empire, which also owns the Fox News Channel among many other media entities.

In a week in which another Murdoch-owned media outlet, the British tabloid News of the World, announced that it will shut down due to despicable invasions of privacy, it seems important to remind ourselves what a cancer on the world of journalism Murdoch has been.

Despite earlier assurances from him that he would not turn the Journal into a right-wing advocacy rag, that is exactly what he has done.

And Fox News is just another "objective news source." Yeah, right.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

What will it take for Americans to wake up and reform capitalism?

By Carl 

This is what:

Yes, the rich live in a different world. And no, information won't change them. But a revolution will. Revolutions build slowly over a long time. Then, suddenly, a critical mass, a flash point, something totally unexpected ignites the ticking bomb.

It happened recently in a remote Tunisian village. Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old college graduate, unable to pay bribes, set himself on fire to protest police confiscation of his unlicensed vegetable cart. That triggered a revolution. And his death rapidly led to the collapse of a 24-year dictatorship.

Today we have four hot time bombs, tick-ticking, soon to make history; any one can easily accelerate the revolution that's already killing Wall Street from within. 

I'll list them but I urge you to go to Market Watch and read the descriptions in full:

1. Wealth gap: Super-Rich vs class wars, death of democracy
2. Wall Street's doomsday capitalism vs rule by anarchy
3. Pentagon's perpetual war machine vs America's budget time bomb
4. Global population explosion vs resources, jobs, better lifestyles

ANY ONE of those will trigger a mass collapse of the American economy. Any one. All four are in motion already.

You see, the rich really are different. As the article notes, they vacation in elite resorts, they meet at elite clubs, and they manipulate the economy from behind barriers and firewalls that would make Fort Knox blink. 

And they are woefully out of touch with the nations they "reside" in. "Reside" is in quotes because like there are now transnational corporations, there are now transnational people. They may reside in the U.S. or Britain or Switzerland or some small tropical island, but their power and influence and economic activity is so globally pervasive that they can influence far flung regions of the globe.

Prime example? Rupert Murdoch, an Australian who made his media bones in the UK before crossing the Atlantic, and then the Pacific to set up Asia's first pan-national satellite television system.

The rich not only are different from me and you, they don't even care about me and you.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Be careful which enemies you make

By Edward Copeland 

In Charles Ferguson's outstanding documentary on the financial meltdown, Inside Job, one of his interview subjects is former N.Y. Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who'd been known as the Sheriff of Wall Street for going after shady business practices long before the collapse. Toward the end of Inside Job, it makes the point that none of the financial firms ever faced investigations for their traders writing off high-priced escort services as business expenses, but the Justice Department did pursue Spitzer when it was discovered after he was governor that he used an escort service. The work that Spitzer did and the promise he held as a gifted politician that came crashing down because of his personal weakness are detailed well in another excellent documentary from the prolific filmmaker Alex Gibney, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer.

Gibney also made the great 2010 documentary Casino Jack and the United States of Money as well as the similarly outstanding Taxi to Dark Side and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the World. He also served in producing capacities on Ferguson's excellent No End in Sight and the brilliant Who Killed the Electric Car?

While Client 9 definitely makes the case that the political downfall of Spitzer may have been an orchestrated hit by his enemies in the business community and the Republican Party, Gibney doesn't try to downplay Spitzer's faults beyond the weakness that led him to seek high-priced sexual companionship in the first place. The film paints a broader portrait of the man's achievements and his hubris, which include a superiority complex and an approach that makes him come off as a bully, even if what he was trying to do was right.

As with the best documentaries, Client 9 teaches you things that you didn't know. It seems as if so many of the recent outstanding documentaries, no matter what their subject may be, show how spoonfed the U.S. media are, regurgitating "facts" that get handed to them while seldom checking their veracity. As far as I knew (and I imagine this to be the case with most people who heard about Spitzer and the call girl), his preferred escort was "Kristen" aka Ashley DuPre, who then turned herself into another of those freak celebrities, who ended up with a job at Rupert Murdoch's New York Post as a love and sex columnist.

Client 9, through interviews with one of the owners of The Emperors Club escort service, reveals that Spitzer saw "Kristen" maybe once but mainly went out with a woman who went by the name Angelica. Gibney interviewed her, but she didn't want her face or voice revealed, so an actress plays her part and reads the transcript of her interviews. Ironically, she's now a commodities day trader.

Where Spitzer really might have earned the enemies who were determined to stop him was when as attorney general he went after the head of AIG, Hank Greenberg, for the crooked financial games that company was playing, long before that company's collapse became a major cause of the world financial collapse and cost U.S. taxpayers billions in not one, but two bailouts. Greenberg was not at the helm by then, having been removed by his own board for violating company rules, but the methods AIG employed while Greenberg ran it were still going on and led to AIG's implosion.

U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia prevented Spitzer's pursuit of Greenberg prior to that by claiming the Justice Department was building a case against Greenberg, which they never filed. However, this same Garcia intercepted wire transfers Spitzer made and started looking into escort services that led to leaks that got Spitzer's sexual habits revealed. This also came at the time the Bush Administration was firing U.S. attorneys who weren't prosecuting enough Democrats.

Needless to say, when prosecutors go after prostitution rings, they rarely go after the clients, just the owners and the prostitutes. In contrast, around the same time, the D.C. Madam case surfaced and they only pursued the madam there, even though it was revealed that two of her clients were high-profile Republicans, including Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, who was just re-elected. He faced no legal inquiries.

Many believed that Spitzer had a good shot at being the country's first Jewish president. I just wonder if he'd been able to keep after Wall Street as he was doing, whether some of the mess that happened could have been prevented since no regulatory fixes have really been put in place to stop it since. Government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations shall not perish from the United States and we the little people always will be the ones paying the price. Thank goodness we have documentary filmmakers such as Alex Gibney to do the job that journalists have long since abandoned or forgotten how to do.

(Cross-posted at Edward Copeland on Film.)