Australian media “inquiry” designed to protect Murdoch empire

WSWS

The Gillard government last week announced a narrowly-focussed inquiry into the print and on-line media. The six-month inquiry, to be run by a former judge with no powers to compel witnesses, is clearly designed to defend Rupert Murdoch’s interests in the face of the ongoing phone-hacking and influence-peddling scandal wracking his News International group in Britain and globally.

Communications minister Senator Stephen Conroy flatly ruled out any examination of the two most obvious issues raised by the exposure of Murdoch’s British operations: whether his News Limited outlets have conducted similar activities in Australia, and the grip that Murdoch and a handful of other proprietors have over the Australian media—which has one of the most concentrated ownership structures in the world.

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Tony Blair is godfather to Rupert Murdoch’s daughter

Wherever there ıs power, celebrıty corruptıon and conscıence-less beıngs - Tony ıs there. And on thıs sıck bucket occasıon dressed ın messıanıc whıte. And our Tony has a Faıth Foundatıon? Hahahahahahahaha. Faıth ın what exactly? Faıth ın lıes deceıt and the propagatıon of mass murder perhaps?  No doubt Blair will continue to do what he does best under the cover of eloquence and sickly smiles. It's amazıng that folks stıll buy ınto hıs paper thın ımage.

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Telegraph

Tony Blair is godfather to one of Rupert Murdoch’s young children, it has emerged in an interview with the media tycoon’s wife Wendi. The former prime minister was reportedly present in March last year when Murdoch’s two daughters by his third wife were baptised on the banks of the Jordan. The information was not made public and its disclosure in an interview with Mrs Murdoch in Vogue will prove highly embarrassing for Mr Blair. 

His close ties to the Murdochs could explain his reluctance to condemn the News International phone hacking scandal. In July, it was reported that he asked Gordon Brown to put pressure on Tom Watson, the Labour MP who helped expose the scandal, to drop his investigation. 

 Last night, Mr Blair’s spokesman refused to comment, but a News Corp source confirmed that Mr Blair was godfather to Grace, as was Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch’s eldest son.

While Mrs Murdoch does not comment on Mr Blair directly, the article states that Miss Kidman, Mr Jackman and Mr Blair are godparents. It claims that Mr Blair attended the Jordanian ceremony “garbed in white” and describes him as one of Mrs Murdoch’s “closest friends”. They have a mutual friend in Queen Rania of Jordan, who hosted the baptism. Both women were recently on the judging panel for a film prize organised by the Tony Blair Faith Foundation.

News Corp.’s ‘Next Scandal’ May Be Computer Hacking

bloomberg.com

Revelations that U.K. tabloid journalists may have graduated to hacking computers in addition to mobile phones may form the next scandal facing Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., a U.K. lawmaker investigating privacy violations by the now-defunct News of the World said. 

Police and parliament have mostly focused their probes on how journalists illegally accessed the voice mails of celebrities, politicians, and crime victims, and who at the company knew about it. More revelations of computer hacking and other forms of spying could emerge, Tom Watson, a Labour Party lawmaker, said yesterday. [...]

9/11 and Israel: Alan Sabrosky’s Shocking Press TV Interview

Gordon Duff / veteranstoday.com

“We Know Who, We Even Know Why…”

Tying Israel Irrevocably to 9/11

 

This week, Dr. Alan Sabrosky, Managing Editor at Veterans Today, was interviewed on 9/11 and Israel’s involvement and their influence in American affairs.   Dr. Sabrosky is interviewed by Susan Modaress of Press TV.  Runtime is 20 minutes.

Alan, I call him that, a fellow editor, fellow Marine and good friend, does what few do when discussing issues of such extreme controversy.  Alan sticks to the facts, takes the facts to logical conclusions and stops there.  Any American of any political leaning or ethnicity can and should, out of patriotism and out of sanity, watch this interview.

The case made is a case that will stand up in a court of law, a case not contrived for entertainment, for propaganda or for an emotional “fix,” feeding hate, prejudice or the desire by some for conspiracies to fill the void of a life bereft of meaning.

Alan Sabrosky is “serious as a heart attack.”

There is an underlying message to this interview, intended or not.  Dr. Sabrosky establishes a defensible position and sets limits.

A majority of Americans are aware that 9/11 had clear signs of government complicity, both operationally and in the subsequent investigation that even Judge Napolitano and Geraldo Rivera of Rupert Murcoch’s FOX NEWS called a “whitewash.”  A major Australian poll taken last fall showed 77% of people there believe the US government to be fully complicit in 9/11.  Similar polls in the US regularly score over 50%, some much higher.

Sabrosky’s case, presented with much clarity, plants responsibility for 9/11 at the feet of Israel and Americans whose loyalties, if we can call them that, are certainly not to the United States.  That these “Americans” now believed to be complicit in the planning and execution of the 9/11 terror attacks are, for the most part, officials of the government, is telling.

Their complicity couldn’t be more obvious if they were caught standing with the detonation switches in their hands.

Israel is a different story, a public relationship characterized as “close friendship” and a private one that more closely resembles that between America and the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.

Most Americans are not aware of how the relationship between Israel and the United States has soured over the past 40 years.  Behind an endless barrage of stories of the holocaust and fear mongering about Antisemitism, political extremists in Israel and their allies in the US, many in positions of extreme power and influence, have contrived to seriously harm the United States, ostensibly under the guise of “support for Israel” and misrepresented security issues.

Sabrosky calls it “high treason.”

Below, the forgotten Geraldo Rivera report on 9/11, now “disappeared” from history, from the archives, forgotten and victim of its own “coverup.”

Postscript

Beyond this, the past decade has bombarded the American public and the world with wildly conflicting conspiracy theories and phony science, the worst of it from the American government itself.

What can I say as a postscript or commentary to the interview?  Liberal, conservative, Jew, Gentile, what Alan Sabrosky says is simply the truth.  He has the credentials and the character to know the truth.

The message:

Believing the government and mainstream media’s version of 9/11 and allowing Israeli “dual citizens” to serve in government or electing and appointing officials whose relationship with Israel is detrimental to the security of the United States is inconsistent with citizen responsibility for any American.

Related Interview:

Declassified: Massive Israeli manipulation of US media exposed

Amid the Murdoch Scandal, There’s an Acrid Smell of Business as Usual

johnpilger.com

In Scoop, Evelyn Waugh's brilliant satire on the press, there is the moment when Lord Copper, owner of the Daily Beast, meets his new special war correspondent, William Boot, in truth an authority on wild flowers and birdsong. A confused Boot is ushered into his lordship's presence by Mr Salter, the Beast's foreign editor.

“Is Mr Boot all set for his trip?"

“Up to a point, Lord Copper."

Copper briefs Boot as follows: "A few sharp victories, some conspicuous acts of personal bravery on the Patriot side and a colourful entry into the capital. That is the Beast policy for the war . . . We shall expect the first victory about the middle of July."

Rupert Murdoch is a 21st-century Lord Copper. The amusing gentility is missing; the absur­dity of his power is the same. The Daily Beast wanted victories; it got them. The Sun wanted dead Argies; gotcha! Of the bloodbath in Iraq, Murdoch said: "There is going to be collateral damage, and if you really want to be brutal about it, better we get it done now . . ." The Times, the Sunday Times, Fox got it done.

Corporate monoculture

Long before it was possible to hack phones, Murdoch was waging a war on journalism, truth, humanity, and succeeded because he knew how to exploit a system that welcomed his devotion to the "free market". He may be more extreme in his methods, but he is no different in kind from many of those now lining up to condemn him who have been his beneficiaries, mimics, collaborators, apologists.

As Gordon Brown turns on his former master, accusing him of running a "criminal-media nexus", watch the palpable discomfort in the new parliamentary-media consensus. "We must not be backward-looking," said a Labour MP. Those parliamentarians caught two years ago with both hands in the Westminster till, who did nothing to stop the killing of hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq, and stood and cheered the war criminal responsible, are now "united" behind the "calm" figure of Ed Miliband. There is an acrid smell of business as usual.

Certainly, there is no "revolution", as reported in the Guardian, which compared the fall of Murdoch with that of the tyrant Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania in 1989. The overexcitement is understandable; Nick Davies's scoop is a great one. Yet the truth is, Britain's system of elite monopoly control of the media rests not on News International alone, but on the Mail and the Guardian and the BBC, perhaps the most influential of all.

All share a corporate monoculture that sets the agenda of the "news", defines acceptable politics by maintaining the fiction of distinctive parties, normalises unpopular wars and guards the limits of "free speech". This will be strengthened by the illusion that a "bad apple" has been "rooted out". [...] 

Journalism’s ‘Dark Arts’

voanews.com / Digital Frontiers

Hacking, Blagging, and Why the Murdoch Hacking Scandal is Nothing New

There’s an unofficial rule among British journalists: dog doesn’t bite dog. In other words, reporters working at one Fleet Street tabloid should not expose the wrong doings of reporters at other Fleet Street tabloids, as there are plenty of wrong doings to go around.

That rule is just one of the many casualties of the burgeoning phone hacking scandal involving media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his now shuttered News of the World tabloid.

Murdoch may become another.

As CEO and founder of News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch spent decades building the world’s second largest media conglomerate, measured by revenue, behind only the Walt Disney Company. He is not a man known for his modesty, nor are the newsrooms of his nearly 200 newspapers, radio stations and global TV networks.

For decades, politicians in Australia, Britain, the United States and other nations have sought the endorsements of Murdoch’s newspapers, and scorned the wrath of his broadcasters. As the New York Times‘ David Carr recently wrote: “The News Corporation has historically used its four newspapers — it also owns The Sun, the Times of London, and the Sunday Times — to shape and quash public debate, routinely helping to elect prime ministers with timely endorsements while punishing enemies at every turn.”

It’s also been an open secret for years that some of his English papers – notably The Sun and News of the World – along with other British tabloids, have engaged in a variety of questionable activities collectively known among journalists as the “Dark Arts.” Those arts allegedly include, but aren’t limited to, bribing civil servants and police, wiretapping the phones of public officials, using private investigators to obtain personal information, hacking mobile phones and something the Brits call “blagging” – the art of obtaining powerful information. At times those actions have lead to prosecutions, more rarely convictions, but nothing in the past has hit News Corp – or journalism more generally – than this summer’s hacking scandal. [...]

Murdoch: This scandal has exposed the scale of elite corruption

Hardly a surprise. But it's nice to see the MSM going with it...

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Guardian

 "First the official deception of the Iraq war, then the collapse of a deregulated banking system, then the exposure of systematic sleaze in parliament revealed a growing crisis in the way the country is run. Now that crisis has been shown to have spread to the media and police. Official Britain isn't working. Sooner or later, pressure for change will become unstoppable."

The Tory operation to bury the phone-hacking scandal in spin and official inquiries is now in full flow. On his way back from Africa, David Cameron declared it was essential to get the whole business into perspective, echoing Rupert Murdoch's insistence that his competitors had got up "this hysteria". Today, the prime minister chided Ed Miliband for "chasing conspiracy theories" and claimed it was really Gordon Brown who had been in the pocket of the global media billionaire.

Meanwhile, News International pundits and others with their own reasons to stem the flood of revelations have been loudly insisting that the political clout of Murdoch's corporate colossus has been exaggerated. The hyper-regulated BBC is the real media monopoly, they say, and in any case the current fixation with phone hacking has meant no one is discussing bankers' bonuses and the threat of another financial meltdown. This is a "frenzy that has grown out of control", the Daily Mail complained.

But the real frenzy isn't the exposure of the scandal – it's the scale of corruption, collusion and cover-up between News International, politicians and police that the scandal has revealed. As the cast of hacking victims, blaggers and blackmailers has lengthened, and the details of the incestuous payments and job-swapping between News International, government and Scotland Yard become more complex, it's easy to lose sight of the bigger picture that is now emerging.

If it were not for the uncovering of this cesspit, the Cameron government would be preparing to nod through the outright takeover of BSkyB by News International, taking its dominance of Britain's media and political world into Silvio Berlusconi territory. But what has been exposed now goes well beyond the hacking of murder victims and dead soldiers' families – or even the media itself. The scandal has lifted the lid on how power is really exercised in 21st-century Britain – in which the unreformed City and its bankers play a central part. [...]

Sean Hoare Dead: News Of The World Hacking Whistleblower Found Dead In London

WTF?

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Huffingfton Post

Sean Hoare, a former reporter for the News of the World who was the first to go on the record about Andy Coulson's alleged knowledge of the phone hacking there, has been found dead, according to the Guardian. He was found by police at his London home.

Hoare was known to have problems with drugs and alcohol, and the police said that they were not treating the death as a suspicious one, though they did not reveal what caused Hoare to pass away. But it still comes as a grim coincidence during a period when the phone hacking scandal is escalating seemingly every day.

Hoare first outed himself as a phone-hacker in a September 10 New York Times article. He said that he used to play Coulson—who became the top communications aide to Prime Minister David Cameron, and was later arrested for his alleged role in the hacking operation—recordings of hacked voicemails when the latter was the editor of the News of the World. Coulson, he told the paper, "actively encouraged me to do it." After the article was published, Hoare was questioned by police.

He spoke again to the paper last week, after the scandal had turned into a full-blown crisis. 


See also:

Sean Hoare - NoW Whistle-Blower Found Dead - Speaking About Hacking In March 2011

James Corbett on Sean Hoare's Death, Murdoch Scandal Turning Bloody

 

Avalanche! Media Hyperbole On News Corp, The ‘Free’ Press And A ‘Berlin Wall Moment’

medialens

 "Just as when Tony Blair’s New Labour swept into Downing Street in 1997, and when the sainted Barack ‘Yes we can!’ Obama ascended to the US presidency in 2009, it is crucial that the slate is once again wiped clean, and public confidence in power restored, so that the establishment can get on with doing pretty much whatever it likes. Or if we decide that this is unacceptable, as we should, then we can rip up the endlessly repeating script and rewrite it in our favour."

‘The world is changing’, declared the Guardian in a ‘revolutionary week’. ‘This is our Berlin Wall moment’, tweeted Guardian columnist George Monbiot. ‘Our democracy is stronger’, proclaimed the Independent. For BBC political editor Nick Robinson, it was an ‘avalanche’ that was ‘still moving’. ‘Gravity’, he intoned, ‘cannot be defied for ever.’ Someone at this very moment may well be writing the script for ‘Avalanche!’, the next blockbuster movie from a major Hollywood studio (but probably not 20^th Century Fox.)

There’s no doubt that a body blow has been delivered to Rupert Murdoch’s mighty News Corporation empire. Leading politicians, who until very recently had been both obsequious and fearful, now want to put themselves at least a bargepole’s length away from the media mogul. As Media Lens reader ‘Keith-264’ noted on our message board:

‘Rupert's down and is getting a tabloid handbagging from lots of people who hitherto hid under a stone at the mere sound of his name.’ (July 14, 2011)

The power of the public is the prime reason for the shift. There had been near-universal revulsion at the phone hacking involving murdered children, victims of the 7 July 2005 bombing in London, and the families of servicemen killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. News International payments to police officers and pay-offs to phone-hacking victims, together with feeble and curtailed police investigations, make up a toxic mix with rumours of even worse to be exposed in the near future. In this atmosphere of public disgust, the main political parties had finally shown some mettle and stood up to Murdoch’s long-time bullying. 

Tory leader David Cameron desperately tried to keep his head above water, seemingly unable to comprehend the extent of a rapidly escalating anger throughout an appalled country. He was engulfed by fallout from his shoddy judgement in employing Andy Coulson, a former editor of News of the World, as his director of communications.

Spreading around the blame in an attempt to dilute his own culpability, Cameron stated:

‘The truth is, we have all been in this together—the press, politicians and leaders of all parties—and yes, that includes me.’

There was no sign that he, far less the government, would resign over the matter. [...]

The Murdoch hacking scandal and class “justice”

World Socialist Website

Two weeks into the latest stage of the scandal over phone hacking and other illegal activities by Rupert Murdoch’s News International group in Britain, revelations continue to pour out, each more damaging than the last.

It has been revealed that News of the World, which endlessly banged the drum of “law and order,” over the course of many years tapped into the mobile phones of thousands of people, including politicians, government ministers, police, members of the royal family, film celebrities and journalists.

It and other Murdoch newspapers stand accused of illegally obtaining the personal records of prominent government officials. Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has accused Murdoch’s Sunday Times of using “known criminals” to access his financial and legal files, with the aim of “bringing me down as a government minister.”

These accusations have been accompanied by numerous reports of the Murdoch press’s modus operandi of bribery, blackmail and intimidation.

Yet, despite the professed moral outrage of the government and opposition parties, nothing has been done to prepare a criminal investigation into the allegations. The premises of News International should long ago have been declared a crime scene. Instead, the government, by refusing to take even the most basic steps to secure evidence of wrong-doing, is facilitating a cover-up.

It has been reported that thousands, and perhaps millions, of emails relating to the scandal have already been erased by a News International executive. But nothing has been done to stop the destruction of potentially incriminating evidence. No computers have been impounded, no hard-drives seized, no minutes of board meetings subpoenaed.

The promise of a parliamentary inquiry to report months, if not years, from now is being used for the primary purpose of enabling Murdoch’s media group to destroy evidence of illegal activity and buy time to organise a whitewash.

The police have not even called in for questioning the figures at the centre of the allegations, such as the former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks, currently the chief executive of News International, Rupert Murdoch’s son James, chairman of News International, or the big boss himself.

Just three individuals have been questioned by the police, including Andy Coulson, editor at the News of the World between 2003 and 2007 and Prime Minister David Cameron’s director of communications until January. None have been charged.

The entire response of both the governing parties—the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats—and the opposition Labour Party to the exposure of the criminal operations of Murdoch has been focused on protecting the international press mogul known to many as the “Dirty Digger”. Every institution of the capitalist state—the major parties, the government, Parliament, the courts, the police—is implicated in Murdoch’s crimes. They are all to one degree or another on the billionaire press baron’s payroll, and have all been involved in covering up for his mafia-like methods. [...]

The Fourth Estate is bankrupt By William Bowles

williambowles.info

From the middle of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth imperialism was the dominant national ideology, transcending class and party divisions. Britain was saturated in the ethos and attitudes of empire. They infused plays and books and, later, films. They informed school textbooks. They inspired paintings, prints and engravings. They filled newspapers and magazines. They figured in advertisements and packaging. The impact was arguably greater than that of any previous dominant ideology because its pre-eminence coincided with the rise of the mass market and the mass media. — ‘Imperialism and juvenile literature’ edited By Jeffrey Richards. Manchester University Press, 1989

So what’s changed? Not much really. Today of course, the ideology of imperial expansion now masks itself as ‘humanitarian intervention’ or ‘democracy-building’.

Our Victorian ancestors were less coy about colonizing, claiming to be on a ‘civilizing mission’. But ‘civilizing’ the Libyans, the Iraqis or the Afghans would be a step too far in these allegedly politically correct times but it’s the same thing by another name.

Yet the abyssmal failings of Western ‘democracy’ are all around us. We have governments that regardless that an ‘opposition’ exists are effectively one-party states and have been ever since the early years of the 20th century. From 1945 to 2009 it was a Tory/Labour ‘coalition’ and now we’re back to the pre-WWI war Tory/Liberal version. It makes little difference that every five years we vote for one or the other. Successive governments are an intrinsic part of an ossified and corrupt state self-’regulated’ for generations—and it still is—the expenses scandals and now the News of the World/News Corp fiasco notwithstanding.

The ever-expanding scale of the criminal enterprise that is Murdoch’s News Corp, reveals the awful truth about capitalism’s version of democracy; namely that it only works for those in power and for those with power. For a single corporation to have direct access and control at the very heart of government smacks of the days of William Randolph Hearst, made famous by Orson Welles in Citizen Kane, where rich and powerful individuals are able to determine the fate of a nation. [...]

Phone-hacking: US senator calls for News Corp probe

BBC News

A key US senator has called for an investigation into whether reported hacking by News Corporation targeted any US citizens.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller said the authorities should consider whether journalists working for the media giant had broken US law. He warned of "serious consequences" should that be found to be the case.

The 168-year-old News of the World shut down on Sunday after numerous accusations of phone hacking. Other papers owned by Rupert Murdoch have faced similar allegations.

Mr Rockefeller, a Democrat, was the first major voice in the US Congress to call for an investigation into the scandal, which has gripped Britain.

The BBC's Steve Kingstone in Washington says these are the first signs that the hacking story is extending across the Atlantic.

'Breach of ethics'
 

In a written statement, Mr Rockefeller said he was concerned that hacking by News Corporation journalists may have extended to American targets, including victims of the 11 September attacks.

He did not present any evidence to support that claim, but called on the authorities to look into any possible wrong-doing.

"I encourage the appropriate agencies to investigate to ensure that Americans have not had their privacy violated," he said.

"The reported hacking by News Corporation newspapers against a range of individuals - including children - is offensive and a serious breach of journalistic ethics. This raises serious questions about whether the company has broken US law," he said. Mr Murdoch's American assets include Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and Harper Collins publishers.

Parliamentary motion
 

In the UK, News Corporation has been under mounting pressure to scrap its bid for a full takeover of TV giant BSkyB - in which it already owns a 39.1% share - since new phone-hacking allegations about the News of the World emerged last week.

Later on Wednesday, British MPs will be asked to vote on an opposition Labour Party motion that "this House believes that it is in the public interest for Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation to withdraw its bid for BSkyB".

Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron is also expected to make a statement to MPs on the nature of an inquiry into the hacking allegations.

Mr Murdoch has now been asked to appear in front of British MPs to answer questions on the issue, while police on Tuesday accused his newspapers of blocking their original investigations in 2006.

Murdoch's dirty tricks against Palestinians

aljazeera

Hacking the mobile phones of British families who had lost loved ones to sexually depraved violent criminals, al-Qaeda inspired "terrorists" and Taliban insurgents proved the tipping point that led to the closure of Britain's most popular Sunday newspaper The News of the World, first published in London in 1843 and printed for the very last time on Sunday July 9, 2011.

 

To adopt a current media idiom, hacking these telephones at times of deep family grief became toxic for Rupert Murdoch's News International media empire because public support for precisely these victims sits at the heart of all Murdoch's political strategies. As a result, Murdoch has been forced to mount a damage limitation exercise on an unprecedented scale in an effort to protect his global media empire from the fallout.

Hugh Grant, a famous British actor turned investigative journalist, himself a victim of News International phone hacking was the first to acknowledge the extent to which the invasion of celebrities and politicians' privacy paled into insignificance compared to the unpardonable intrusion into the lives of the newly bereaved. Grant is absolutely right, but it is the fact that Sunday's News of the World - like its daily sister The Sun - sets itself up as the champion of these victims that hoisted it by its own petard.

In fact, the "Sarah's Law" campaign that named and shamed convicted paedophiles following the murder of eight-year-old Sarah Payne was spearheaded personally by Murdoch's now beleaguered lieutenant Rebekah Brooks. When confronted with criticism that the campaign encouraged vigilantism and threatened the rule of law she responded that she did not "regret the campaign for one minute". The same well attuned ear for the popular mood led The News of the World and The Sun to launch and promote the popular charity Help the Heroes that supports British troops.  

Damaging reputations

Safe in the knowledge that Murdoch's News International phone hacking scandal will now be subject to forensic examination and extensive analysis, I will delve instead into the News of the World toolbox of dirty tricks to see what dark arts of the modern hacks' trade have been deployed against supporters of the Palestinian cause in recent years. In doing so I believe I will get closer to the heart of Murdoch politics - an important topic that will almost certainly remain untouched by any official inquiry into the criminality and immorality that has dramatically engulfed his media business in Britain.

I believe it is especially enlightening to reflect on the damage done to the reputation of Palestinian supporters by News International journalists in a week when David Cameron has been seriously compromised by his close association with the disgraced former editor of the News of the World, Andy Coulson, yet has come under no pressure in parliament for keeping the prominent Palestinian peacemaker Sheikh Raed Salah in prison for no good cause. Moreover, it is no coincidence that the handful of British politicians who might once have voiced their concern over Sheikh Salah's ill-conceived arrest have been silent in the face of the ongoing power of uncritical pro-Israel politics nurtured by Murdoch's journalists over a long period.

As Samira Quraishy observes in an article for Middle East Monitor, this silence has been most conspicuous in the case of leading Liberal Democrats including party leader Nick Clegg, Sarah Teather, Ed Davey and Simon Hughes.  Take the case of Sarah Teather - before she became a junior minister to the Murdoch-friendly neo-con cabinet hawk Michael Gove, she was an outspoken supporter of the Palestinians. Not only is her present silence on Sheikh Salah's plight a tribute to Murdoch's unbroken grip on government security policy, it is also a slap in the face for the many voters who put a tick in the box next to her name at the last general election in the mistaken belief that she would show consistency of conduct in or out of government. [...]

 

Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB takeover "in disarray"

channelfournews.com

As calls grow for Rebekah Brooks to be sacked, Channel 4 News learns the axing of the News of the World may have "shifted" the fate of Rupert Murdoch's bid to take full control of BSkyB

Rupert Murdoch's bid to take full control of BSkyB has been thrown into disarray after a Government source told Channel 4 News the decision to shut down the News of the World may have "shifted" the decision-making process.


A source close to Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, said it was not now clear how he could proceed with a judgement on the takeover of BSkyB by News Corporation because the dynamics of Britain's media market had changed.


"We're going to have to wait and see," the source said. "The issue is still media plurality and what this (shutting News of the World) does is reduce the number of voices in the media, so we don't know at this stage how it will affect things. [....]

Europhiles and Aussie Rules Part II

Aussie Rules

In the Fomer colony of her Majesty the Queen, Australia surfaces consistently on many paedophile ring investigations with a familiar denial of Establishment involvement, though the evidence strongly suggests otherwise. This is made easier by the fact that Australia already has the most concentrated media ownership in the western world care of billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

The Australian government is still under the grip of one John Howard, a stalwart protector of the “War on Terror” myth.  As with Blair, Bush, Sarkozy and others, freedoms are rapidly dwindling under his stewardship. Howard has also proved to be a staunch protector of Establishment child molesters.  Governor General, Dr. Peter Hollingworth, an ex-Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane gratefully took on the post of Governer-General before it came to light that he had refused to investigate Anglican priests who were accused of paedophilia in many Churches across Australia and abroad. Despite Howard’s reassurances, this led to a storm of controversy as he began his governorship and which eventually led to his resignation.

In March 2005, after alleged police involvement and protection of the State wide paedophile and child pornography network, a former Young Australian of the year, Dr Reina Michaelson held a press conference in Melbourne, Victoria, on new revelations regarding the controversy. She alleged the paedophile networks involved media personalities, politicians and corporate executives. Nothing new you might say. However, what Michaelson did bring to the proceedings was evidence that should have created a storm of publicity.
 
 She produced a police tape recording from an Ombudsmen meeting in November 2004, where the high level investigator from the Office of Police Integrity (which was formed precisely for the purpose of addressing the continuing allegations of abuse) told her:  “What I would hope that we can achieve is possibly nothing in relation to that past [paedophile] ring, even if it is still operating”. 1
 
This, in itself, is a damning statement offering a hefty can of worms to be opened by the media. True to form, almost all of the Australian press ignored the conference as well as this very revealing statement.

The formation of the Office of Police Integrity was the Victorian Government’s response to fend off calls last year from Dr Michaelson and others for a Royal Commission into links between police corruption, paedophile rings and Melbourne's gangland killings. The Office dismissed their complaints without having interviewed the copious witnesses or having recalled any Victoria files. The Office continues to be viewed by many as a cover for damage limitation rather than a genuine investigative body. In Michaelson’s words from her press release: 

…the victims who were abused as part of this network as children can testify to the fact that police officers we're actually being paid off so that this criminal network remained untouchable. So that's why we want it to be investigated thoroughly, and for there to be a report of the kind of quality that came out as a result of the last complaint. There is clearly something really bad happening in this State, and it needs to be sorted out. […] It's organized crime, and it's being allowed to continue because… There are a couple of bad eggs in the right places. 2

A separate report followed from Edward Picton Mullighan QC appointed by the government’s Commission of Inquiry into Children in State Care# which was itself, pressured into action from Dr. Michaelson’s efforts. Characteristic of so many “official” reports and inquiries, the author of the report seemed to slip into extremely selective and simplistic bias regarding the overview of one witness testimony of systematic and severe sexual abuse. The testimony of the professionals involved was deemed more important than witness testimonies and where all adult explanations were taken at face value without taking into account hundreds of other reported cases within the South Australian care system. As a signpost for further allegations which the government has steadfastly ignored, it was seen as appropriate to sink the report without further discussions. The nature of the evidence was so disturbing that this automatically engendered disbelief, or as a more likely possibility, the recommendations to cease further investigations.
 
The only Member of the Australian Parliament, speaker of the House, Peter Lewis MP raised the issue of murder, corruption and paedophilia thereby taking it straight to the Aussie Establishment door.

The politician gave a statement to police that two gay men murdered in Adelaide in late 2004 told him that a serving elected politician was involved in paedophile activities in Adelaide’s South Parklands. Robert Woodland, who was found beaten to death in the Parklands last December and Shaine Moore, whose body was found in his home in suspicious circumstances in February 2005, separately contacted Lewis and told him of the person’s paedophilic actions. Police initially said the paedophile MP allegations were examined in 2003 and found to be unsubstantiated, but reopened their investigation. Unfortunately, the key witness, one Lewis Craig Ratcliffe, was also a convicted sex offender which didn’t help the evidence.
 
 Nevertheless, eight other witness’ testimonies were summarily ignored. All had evidence about the paedophile MP’s extra-curricular activities. Which is why bringing attention to the subject of organised child abuse resulted in the MP resigning to avoid being ousted by a “no confidence” vote. This was said to be based upon his lack of evidence, despite Lewis’ call for a proper investigation and the obvious glut of provable background cases connected to a high-level paedophile ring operating above the law. The latter however, was deemed inadmissible.

If the MP’s allegations were without foundation and evidence, it begs the question why the Rann Government took the unprecedented step of temporarily suspending parliamentary privilege in order to stop the MP at the centre of the claims being named. One political scientist commented on the move describing the removal of the privilege of Parliament as a “major step” and that “The argument that Premier Rann is using [that the paedophile allegations take precedent over anything else] is an emotive argument but put against 100 years of convention is a difficult one to push…” 3

Other pleas for investigations into separate paedophile rings began to surface during the same year and by August 2005, someone in the OFI obviously wanted to send a message showing just how ineffective the Office was. 4
 
The Privacy Commissioner was called in to investigate how over 500 pages of police files on more than 400 people were sent to a woman who had lodged a serious complaint against the police, after the Office had dismissed her original complaint. The documents that the woman anonymously received showed that “the OPI agreed with police to cut the scope of the investigation from two years to five months - without telling the woman.” and also revealed that “her husband’s files were accessed in April last year - although the OPI told the woman that its investigation had found no such access.” One MP told parliament that OPI had ‘misled’ the woman over the accessing of her husband’s file, and had ‘deliberately deceived’ her over the scope of the investigation. As always, the networks appear to be a tightly woven affair where evidence is highly difficult to come by. This is no surprise if it is sourced from those whose job it is to set the laws and to then give the appearance of investigating it.
On 4th April 2005, Peter Lewis MP, gave a 20 minute resignation speech responding to the highly unusual moves by the Rann government to remove him as Speaker of the House. An edited extract follows:

     The Premier and the Deputy Premier have recently publicly insulted and defamed me and, through the efforts of their spin doctors and media minders, in particular Melvin Mansell of the Adelaide Advertiser, to criminally defame me in a series of editorials and articles, which were reckless in that they were not well researched, unfounded, unprofessional, malicious and, for that reason criminal, they provided through the orchestrated campaign the means by which it has become possible for the Premier and Deputy Premier to now attack and tear down the straw man they constructed.

     The central issue in all this is the grossly misleading assertion that I publicly raised the problem of allegations that a Member of Parliament is a paedophile. I made no such claim. That was made by Melvin Mansell’s Advertiser itself. It began on 2 March, when Nigel Hunt contacted me to ask me about claims made by Craig Ratcliffe on web sites late last year and repeated by him to The Advertiser early this year that there is a paedophile in state parliament and that he (Craig Ratcliffe) was very concerned that his life had been threatened following the death in suspicious circumstances of someone else, namely Shaine Moore, whom he knew and whom he believed had been murdered.

   I responded honestly to Nigel Hunt's unsolicited inquiries to my office on 1 March. That information coming into my office from a few of the very many people claiming knowledge about the activities of paedophiles in general was of concern to me because, of the few people who spoke about parliament's problem, more than half had been killed. Since then, Shaine Moore's death has been declared a murder. […]

…they [witnesses] were being ‘bumped off ’— that is, murdered and viciously assaulted — quicker than I or the people who were helping me could get them to write down their allegations and then swear that what they were saying was true. Of course, I told Nigel Hunt that they should be protected from murderous acts. At no time have I ever said that they were being murdered or violently bashed into serious long-term mental dysfunction at the hands or the instigation of any MP. That was an improper speculation made by government ministers and their specialist spin doctors to the press across the length and breadth of the state to try to show me in a bad light. In retrospect, I believe it was another deliberate red herring contrived by them, just like the one about homosexuals and their haunts, to discredit me. […]

The most outrageous thing of all, which disturbs me most about the information which has come in to my office is not the matter of paedophiles in South Australia's parliament but what appears to be the related and organised activities of those paedophiles in high public office—that is, the judiciary, the senior ranks of human services portfolios, some police, and MPs, across the nation, especially within the ranks of the Labor Party. Yet you only have to recall in recent years the investigations, charges and successful convictions against such people as Darcy, Liddy, Wright, Wells, a former senator, and other current and past MPs in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria to understand my concern. They have not acted alone or in isolation, it seems to me. Equally, it seems to me, they cleverly recruit their victims not from amongst the churches' young groups and surf life saving clubs and boy scouts these days. There is a new group of youngsters they prey on—those involved in other action-type sports requiring body contact in coaching and skills development, if not in the action of the sport itself.

Lewis reiterated the standard protocol of initiatives, inquiries, commissions and investigations of this nature are initiated under intense pressure, ridicule, and denials, while the individual or individuals in question who have sought to have proper investigations into organized child molestation are defamed, slandered and marginalised. The door always remains closed to Establishment complicity. Meantime, another Australian police officer shoots himself in an apparent suicide while investigating cases of child abuse. 5
 
On the subject of child pornography we have explored the multi-faceted nature of endless prosecutions. Placing tax payers’ money into a subjective, palliative cure is designed to protect the root cause of the problem. As Dr. Michaelson mentioned in her in Press statement following the resistance and refusal of Office of Police Integrity to do their job:

This is NOT the opportunistic abuse of children by men scouring playgrounds or scout groups. What  organized means is that groups of men – and we are largely talking about men, though women have been involved too – that groups of men can meet regularly at particular places at particular times and have children provided for them to abuse. I was told by the OPI’s investigators that what they, QUOTE, “hope to achieve is possibly nothing in relation to that past [paedophile] ring, even if it’s still operating.” 6

They are nothing if not honest in their intentions.

What is more, their trust in the Establishment ensures that such honesty is always rewarded. Peter Lewis was not the first to be jettisoned from Parliament and he will not be the last. From a speech by New South Wales Senator Bill Heffernan in Australian Federal Parliament on 29 May 1998: “Recently I made a speech in which I highlighted the code of silence which protects worldwide child sex networks including people in the judiciary, parliament, clergy and the public service. Many of these people live in an abhorrent culture in which is included, as spoils of office, the right to have sex with children...”
 
Eight years later, the Australian Parliament is still hanging on to these rights.

Notes 

1  Dr. Michaelson Taped Meeting Transcript With The Victorian Ombudsman's Office
Wednesday, 17th November, March 2005. http://www.csapp.net.
2  Dr. Michaelson Taped Meeting Transcript With The Victorian Ombudsman's Office,  http://www.csapp.net. Wednesday, 17th November, 2004.
3  Children in State Care  Commission of Inquiry Report as to a Particular Matter - 28 October 2005.

4  Flinders University political scientist Dean Jaensch, quoted in The Australian: ‘Parliament gagged as speaker quits.’ By Michelle Wiese Bockmann and Tom Richardson, April 05, 2005.
5  ‘Call for 'paedophile ring' inquiry’ The Herald Sun, May 3, 2005. “A Tasmanian lobby group for child sex abuse survivors has called for a state inquiry into claims a paedophile ring operated in Tasmania during the 1970s and 1980s.”

6  Again a policeman clocks on, kills himself By Les Kennedy, Sydney Morning  Herald, November 25, 2005.
7  Press Statement: Dr. Reina Michaelson 2 March 2005.