Phone hacking scandal deepens

[Peter Lemkin]

Davies almost makes it sound as if he things the death is temporally coincident. If it is, there is sure a LOT of temporal coincident Dark Energy in this part of the Universe at the moment. The timing, alone, would make any detective worth his salt think twice and many more times that.......

...anyway, I predict Tuesday [tomorrow] will be an interesting new day in this gift that keeps on giving!.....:mexican: Popcorn anyone? :popcorn:

[Jan Klimkowski]

Another NYT piece.

Some excerpts.

Rupert 'n Rebekah desperately trying to "share" the filth around:

Ms. Brooks and others first made the case, widely believed to be true, that other newspapers had also hacked phones and sought to dig up evidence to prove it, interviews show. At a private meeting, Rupert Murdoch warned Paul Dacre, the editor of the rival Daily Mail newspaper and one of the most powerful men on Fleet Street, that "we are not going to be only bad dog on the street," according to an account that Mr. Dacre gave to his management team. Mr. Murdoch's spokesman did not respond to questions about his private conversations.

Former company executives and political aides assert that News International executives carried out a campaign of selective leaks implicating previous management and the police. Company officials deny that. The Metropolitan Police responded with a statement alleging a "deliberate campaign to undermine the investigation into the alleged payments by corrupt journalists to corrupt police officers."

Over the last several months, Ms. Brooks spearheaded a strategy that seemed designed to spread the blame across Fleet Street, interviews show. Several former News of the World journalists said that she asked them to dig up evidence of hacking. One said in an interview that Ms. Brooks's target was not her own newspapers, but her rivals.

Mr. Dacre, The Daily Mail editor, told his senior managers that he had received several reports from businesspeople, soccer stars and public relations agencies that the News International executives Will Lewis and Simon Greenberg had encouraged them to investigate whether their phones had been hacked by Daily Mail newspapers . "They thought it was unfair that all the focus was on The News of the World," said one News International official with knowledge of the effort. The two men have told colleagues they did not make such calls, but two company officials disputed that.

Mr. Dacre confronted Ms. Brooks over breakfast at the plush Brown's hotel. "You are trying to tear down the entire industry," Mr. Dacre told her, according to an account he relayed to his management team.

Ms. Brooks, whose tenacity is legendary, was not deterred. At a dinner party, Lady Claudia Rothermere, the wife of the billionaire owner of The Daily Mail, overheard Ms. Brooks saying that The Mail was just as culpable as The News of the World. "We didn't break the law," Lady Rothermere said, according to two sources with knowledge of the exchange. Ms. Brooks asked who Lady Rothermere thought she was, "Mother Teresa?"

Allegations of a strategy of selective leaking to dump on Andy "I used to be a made man" Coulson and the police:

In the last two weeks, a series of leaks landed in other British news media that appeared intended to shift blame from News International's current leadership and onto Mr. Coulson and the Metropolitan Police. According to political aides and News Corporation executives, the leaks most likely came from within the company.

Leaks to The Sunday Times, the BBC, and to outlets like Mr. Greenberg's former employer, The London Evening Standard, gave details of Mr. Coulson's alleged payments to the police and blamed previous News International management.

Mr. Greenberg did not respond directly to messages seeking comment. But a News International spokeswoman referred reporters to a statement from Ms. Akers, the head of the police investigation, praising him and Mr. Lewis for their cooperation with the police.

The Metropolitan Police said it was "extremely concerned" that the release of selected information "known by a small number of people" present at meetings between News International and the police "could have a significant impact on the corruption investigation."

Omerta and "resist resist resist":

More recently, as lawsuits and arrests mounted, dissension grew inside News International, interviews show.

After Mr. Edmondson was fired and arrested, Ms. Brooks pressed to pay him a monthly stipend, according to a person with knowledge of the transaction. After an internal disagreement, the payments were moved from the newsroom budget to News International's. The company put other journalists on paid leave after their arrests, reasoning that they were innocent until proven guilty, a company spokesperson confirmed.

By the middle of last year, News International's lawyers and some executives were urging that the company accept some responsibility, said two officials with direct knowledge. Ms. Brooks disagreed, according to three people who described the internal debate. "Her behavior all along has been resist, resist, resist," said one company official.

[Ed Jewett]

July 18, 2011

A Domain of Personal Tyranny

A Real History of Rupert Murdoch

By BRUCE PAGE

Rupert's father, Sir Keith, founded the dynasty during World War I as a dirty-tricks minion for "Billy" Hughes, probably Australia's nastiest prime minister. His cover myth as a heroic war reporter has been so thoroughly dismantled that now it impresses none but family retainers.

At Versailles, Keith was Billy's ever-present aide in striving to make the Peace Conference into a vicious cock-up, rich in racist and imperialist content. Curiously, the pair would have had zero leverage but for the failure of a plot of Keith's, which sought in 1918 to remove Australia's battlefield commander on the Western Front, John Monash, for being an unheroic Jew. (Monash wrote home that it was a bore having to fight a "pogrom" at the same time as fight Ludendorff.) The overall commander, General Douglas Haig, wouldn't play: and Monash's divisions led the British breakthrough at Amiens which, ruining Ludendorff, put Germany suddenly, unexpectedly at the Allies' mercy.

Haig and other soldiers hoped there might be space for a decent peace. But politicians of various brands thought otherwise and none outdid Keith's boss in vengeful demagoguery, destroying at last all the credit Monash had gained for Australia. Billy and Keith weren't prime authors of the Versailles debacle in 1919. But none toiled harder in its cause.

This ironic history yields two items of present relevance. One, we see the core of the Murdoch business: offering political propaganda services, disguised thinly as journalism. Two, there's the stunning Murdoch talent for seizing the wrong end of any available political or military stick. Keith's estimate of Monash and Rupert's of the pseudo-warrior Bush Jr. were reciprocals, to be sure, but identically crass.

Not that we've seen, over the years, any Murdoch disquiet with the results of serving as an uncritical understrapper to power. Implausible as it may now seem, Rupert began with an honorable path before him, and even took some steps along it. In 1950s Australia, he inherited a small but prospering newspaper, run by people who were his friends and admirers. Stirring issues were to hand : notably, the liberation of Australia's indigenous people and the rescue of its white majority from a perilous racist quarrel with its Asian neighbors. These have developed into serious popular movements but were repugnant for decades to the politicians of orthodoxy. And they, Rupert saw, were the ones dishing out television licenses.

Thus his first, pattern-setting editorial defenestration: of a close, loyal friend who was engaged with him in saving from execution a black man framed for rape and murder. The campaign might have given Murdoch, authentically, the outsider status he always pretends to. But true to subsequent form, he raised what can only be called the white flag. Still, by then the ex-editor, Rohan Rivett, had uncovered sufficient malpractice that the supposed murderer could not be hanged, and only jailed for life. This incomplete act of selfless courage remains unique on Murdoch's record.

Possession of television licenses (well, state monopolies) in South Australia and New South Wales gave him resources enough to mount the world stage, and he arrived in London just as Britain's huge popular newspapers began to realize (belatedly) that they were sick, often mortally so. Here, in the 1970s, was Murdoch's indispensable breakthrough a complex event, which Wolff totally misunderstands.

British daily papers in the first part of the last century were chiefly a middle-class habit, but by the time of World War II nearly everyone was joining up. Causes were manifold: new populist methods in journalism and advertising, astonishing socio-political drama, and overdue consummation of the long drive for working-class literacy.

In 1960, the Daily Mirror's circulation was five million. But by the end of the Sixties every popular paper was in trouble. For instance , the News of the World, which Murdoch acquired in 1969 with a six-million circulation, had been at eight million 10 years earlier.

Essentially, the popular press (not then "tabloid") had been caught unaware by new postwar waves of education and social advance. Though sneered at by left and right, these were quite real, and meant that popular journalism's audience was split. About half wanted a new, more intelligent product. The other half wanted more of the old one.

Only one proprietor solved this classic media-management problem creatively, and it wasn't Rupert. Vere Harmsworth, while absorbing financial setbacks at his flagship Daily Mail, invested heavily in the skills of brilliant, strong-minded editors. The Mail raised its sale 50 per cent between 1970 and 2000 and by organic growth, not transfer from other titles. Pardonably repelled by its berserk politics, liberals often miss the Mail's populist intelligence. It is formidable nonetheless.

Murdoch did otherwise. His target was the behemoth Mirror, whose bosses treated the Seventies crisis as an exercise in felo-de-se. Having sprinkled some flimsy upmarket features over the old paper, they cut its size and simultaneously raised its price. Murdoch, acquiring the derelict Sun, relaunched it as a crude clone of the old Mirror but fatter, cheaper and a tad raunchier. The Mirror's sales collapsed: the Sun's soared, as its lockstep reciprocal. Media economics contains no neater (or better deserved) instance of parasitic symbiosis.

Today the Sun (three million) and Mirror together sell about four million, as against the Mirror's 1960s five-million peak: a secular decline of 25 per cent (continuing still), while Britain's population grew 25 per cent. The News of the World, finding no parasite-host in its Sunday marketplace, declined more simply, sales having halved under Murdoch control. Rupert the circulation mastermind is a myth as frail as Keith the upright war reporter.

Mostly, his newspapers are a sad pack of dogs, especially the New York Post and The Times of London absurd vanity sheets by any defensible rules, much as Newscorp's accounts veil their losses. Sentimentally, perhaps, having served it in pre-Murdoch days, I still see journalism flickering in the London Sunday Times. (We owe to it the Downing Street Memorandum, proving intelligence fraud in the Iraq preliminaries overall, though, it sustained Newscorp's aim of tedious servility to Bush Jr.)

But dogs have their functions. First, even in decline, the British tabloids generate vast cash flow, essential to Newscorp's financial vitality. Second, all the papers, profitable or not, are business accessories of a unique type. They have always been politically deliverable: enabling Murdoch to extract from governments in Australia, America and Britain free passes against regulation, designed to sustain media diversity and independence printed and electronic. Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair were his best-known playmates, but leaders of the Australian Labor Party, (specially inclined to fancy that they were exploiting Murdoch) must not be forgotten.
Newscorp's rise to television power was a major subplot in the four-decade deregulation epic, now tardily recognized as an unshackling of Caliban. Its dynamics explain Murdoch's unremitting circulation losses. To be deliverable,a newspaper (or TV show) must be predictable. Then you may manage (even stabilize) its decline, but you mustn't expect organic growth. If you're doing fealty to a bunch of politicians, nothing sucks worse than your staff exposing their misdemeanors even accidentally however beguiling for the readers.

There are some rib-tickling instances in Harry Evans' account of editing The Times while Boss Rupert courted the Thatcher administration. Papers actually were selling fast but numerous editions agonized Downing Street. Agony communicated itself to Rupert, and firing Harry was the only cure.

The extent to which the powerful could rely on other media bosses predictably to deliver their assets is often exaggerated. Certainly, the old monsters like Hearst, Northcliffe and Beaverbrook were driven by unpredictable indeed, barmy passions of their own. But Rupert is the supreme pragmatist. Barking right is the default state of his own politics: however, these can be readily overwritten any time there's a deal to do. It may be worth discussing whether he really likes running moribund newspapers. But the commercial point is that politicians love them.

Their production requires editors whose curiosity-quotient addresses itself to thinking what the boss might think, and never to seeking stories which may penetrate unknown territory. Such people may be kind to dogs and beggars though many of Rupert's retainers are visibly feral but they produce few exclusives, which impact the real world. Thus, their journalistic product centers on stings, checkbook scoops, antique scandals reheated and celebrity gossip. (Murdoch's alleged desire to abolish Britain's royal family would darken the Sun if implemented. But his own dynasty never has done irony.)

Operationally, all this requires a grotesque machinery of bullying, conformity, manipulation and toadyism. Mainly, it is staffed by people who have no exit, as Murdoch service at senior level has always severely dented a resume. Now and then able people became involved: some find havens where they can work decently and inconspicuously, but most are ejected, or self-eject. (The latter option is disliked. When The Times caught tabloid fever and self-trashed its image, Simon Jenkins was hired to do cosmetic repairs but would only sign for two years. Murdoch said he preferred to fire editors himself, but had to accept: of course, he then beat Jenkins to the punch.)

When I wrote The Murdoch Archipelago with Elaine Potter, we justified our title by saying that the Murdochs had built a domain as close to personal tyranny as the legal framework of the liberal West will allow. Most observers agree on this, and so do ex-denizens unless they hope for renewed Newscorp favors.

Predictably, dad's admiration involves that smelly old-class warhorse, the Establishment. The critter exists only to be abjured by ruling-class members, determined to escape whatever obligations of law or honor such status might yet attract. Then actions, which would be greedy and irresponsible in a confessed kingpin, become innocent rebellion, undertaken to toss off oppression by invisible elites. Murdoch's acolytes routinely use such hocus-pocus to obscure the true nature of the boss often from themselves. If you can see Murdoch, power's long-term toady, in that light, nothing's beyond your belief, and envisioning the Post as a palladium of journalism presents no difficulty. And his long support of it, against disastrous market performance (and by now, surely, a thinned-out political value), indicates that Murdoch feels that way himself.

It is, after all, his own creation as nothing else is. Fox News was the work of Roger Ailes; the Sun of Larry Lamb and Kelvin McKenzie; the Newscorp (as against original) Sunday Times of Andrew Neil; the Sky satellite network of the ravening Sam Chisholm. To be sure, they all accepted him as overlord, with sad consequences for their products (and often their ambitions). But, Murdoch myth apart, all of them were hardened pros, doing the hands-on stuff themselves (and fending Rupert off wherever possible).

Their products are not much good, but there is a certain professional gleam: disproof, indeed, of the claim that you can't polish shit. The Post, however, is the product unrefined. It represents Rupert doing a complicated, difficult job as best as he can: something, which should make us think hard about the perils which oppress democracy.

It's insufficiently realized that neither Rupert nor his father had any serious training in journalism. Keith, quite late in life, confessed that he might have made a better reporter had things been otherwise; in fact, he came up as freelance scrabbling for lineage in Melbourne's Edwardian suburbs and was, as he said, "sweated." There are few worse starts, as income depends on writing-up uncritically whatever your sources might offer, and developing habits of independent judgment carries serious prospects of hunger.

By the 1950s, metropolitan newspapers in Australia and America (some in Britain) had quite detailed training procedures. Indeed, Keith had assisted their creation. But he created also the dynastic channel through which Rupert passed them by: inheriting straightaway on his father's death the Adelaide News business, which Keith had deftly extracted from the public company, of which he was managing director.

Very likely Keith anticipated a few more years, but death looked in while Rupert was still at Oxford and no more equipped to command a newspaper than command a small warship or run a middle-sized lawsuit. The trust arrangements required his mother, with co-trustees, to certify Rupert's professional readiness, and that pantomime was duly staged.

It's worth looking back to the Rohan Rivett betrayal, to ask whether Rupert, having seen a few years of hard reporting practice, might have been less daunted by the ridiculous now forgotten Pooh-Bahs who were running South Australia just then. But the real question is about maintaining liberty: something, which requires (among other things) regular performance of the arduous, intricate work of journalism.

From many roles of similar complexity we debar the unqualified. Your family may bequeath you an airliner but can't bequeath you the right to fly it. And similarly with a pharmacy though, as Kipling said, there are no drugs so dangerous as words, where we leave the traffic unrestricted. As we have to.

The right to build a noxious empire like Newscorp is an indispensable consequence of freedom of speech. No society, says Rosa Luxemburg, can be healthy without it. (She is the most reliable libertarian: on consulting the right, such as Hayek, one gleans some admirable sentiments. But then he starts driveling about authoritarian governments being maybe liberal after all.)

Clearly, this freedom cannot be protected by proscriptive law (although some modest regulations may help, and none of those evaded by Newscorp were or are barriers to freedom, any more than are the rules of libel). It is a matter of conscience, as Luxemburg makes clear with her principle that "freedom is for the other fellow": one that applies even when the other fellow is Murdoch.

And, thus, it costs something: a price to be paid by those who believe in it.

It takes various forms, and first comes the effort of keeping your mind from decaying, (like chroniclers of Murdoch such as Michael Wolff), until you start disseminating nonsense about Rupert, the anti-establishment radical. There may be hard, rainy days when someone needs to work for Newscorp. But nobody should do it under the illusion (or pretence) of doing society a favor, or learning how to practice journalism.

Murdoch now controls enough of the market for English-language journalism that anyone resolved to keep clear loses some competitive advantage. People already adequately fixed should accept the limitation and let Murdoch find his servants elsewhere. We must retire the argument that "if I don't do it, someone else will."

Politicians may find it hardest to break the Newscorp habit. Real journalists, in any medium, may ask awkward questions: it's not only paladins of the right who have found ease with Rupert. And, as a rule, his wants are humble just deep-sixing a bit of monopoly law the voters know nothing of.

Centrally, Newscorp is just one among the malignancies generated by four decades of upper-crust self-indulgence, disguised as libertarianism. Possibly there's no cure. But if there is, it will come with a moral climate quite unlike the one Murdoch has so far found propitious.

Bruce Page is the author (with Elaine Potter) of The Murdoch Archipelago, Pocket Books: 2004, 592pp. He can be reached at bruce@pages2.adsl24.co.uk.

This essay first ran on this site on May 15, 2009, with some reflections, omitted here, on Michael Wolff's sycophantic The Man Who Owns the News. Page can be reached at bruce@pages2.adsl24.co.uk

http://www.counterpunch.org/page07182011.html

[Ed Jewett]

Weekend Edition
July 15 - 17, 2011

Selling Wars

The Blood on Murdoch's Hands

By DAVID SWANSON

Nailing Rupert Murdoch for his employees' phone tapping or bribery would be a little like bringing down Al Capone for tax fraud, or George W. Bush for torture. I'd be glad to see it happen but there'd still be something perverse about it.

I remember how outraged Americans were in 2005 learning about our government's warrantless spying, or for that matter how furious some of my compatriots become when a census form expects them to reveal how many bathrooms are in their home.

I'm entirely supportive of outrage. I just have larger crimes in mind. Specifically this:

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights:
Article 20
1. Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law.
The Fox News Channel is endless propaganda for war, and various other deadly policies. As Robin Beste points out,

"Rupert Murdoch's newspapers and TV channels have supported all the US-UK wars over the past 30 years, from Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands war in 1982, through George Bush Senior and the first Gulf War in 1990-91, Bill Clinton's war in Yugoslavia in 1999 and his undeclared war on Iraq in 1998, George W. Bush's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, with Tony Blair on his coat tails, and up to the present, with Barack Obama continuing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and now adding Libya to his tally of seven wars."

In this video, Murdoch confesses to having used his media outlets to support the Iraq War and to having tried to shape public opinion in favor of the war. That is the very definition of propaganda for war.

The propaganda is, also by definition, part of the public record. Although that record speaks for itself, Murdoch has not been shy about adding his commentary. The week before the world's largest anti-war protests ever and the United Nation's rejection of the Iraq War in mid-February 2003, Murdoch told a reporter that in launching a war Bush was acting "morally" and "correctly" while Blair was "full of guts" and "extraordinarily courageous." Murdoch promoted the looming war as a path to cheap oil and a healthy economy. He said he had no doubt that Bush would be "reelected" if he "won" the war and the U.S. economy stayed healthy. That's not an idle statement from the owner of the television network responsible for baselessly prompting all of the other networks to call the 2000 election in Bush's favor during a tight race in Florida that Bush actually lost.

Murdoch's support for the Iraq War extended to producing support for that war from every one of his editors and talking heads. It would be interesting to know what Murdoch and Blair discussed in the days leading up to the war. But knowing that would add little, if anything, to the open-and-shut case against Murdoch as war propagandist. Murdoch had known the war was coming long before February 2003, and had long since put his media machine behind it.

Murdoch has been close to Blair and has now published his book -- a book that Blair has had difficulty promoting in London thanks to the protest organizing of the Stop the War Coalition. Yet Murdoch allowed Mick Smith to publish the Downing Street Memos in his Sunday Times. Murdoch's loyalty really seems to be to his wars, not his warmakers.

John Nichols describes three of those warmakers:

"When the war in Iraq began, the three international leaders who were most ardently committed to the project were US President Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Australian Prime Minister John Howard. On paper, they seemed like three very different political players: Bush was a bumbling and inexperienced son of a former president who mixed unwarranted bravado with born-again moralizing to hold together an increasingly conservative Republican Party; Blair was the urbane 'modernizer' who had transformed a once proudly socialist party into the centrist 'New Labour' project; Howard was the veteran political fixer who came up through the ranks of a coalition that mingled traditional conservatives and swashbuckling corporatists.

"But they had one thing in common. They were all favorites of Rupert Murdoch and his sprawling media empire, which began in Australia, extended to the 'mother country' of Britain and finally conquered the United States. Murdoch's media outlets had helped all three secure electoral victories. And the Murdoch empire gave the Bush-Blair-Howard troika courage and coverage as preparations were made for the Iraq invasion. Murdoch-owned media outlets in the United States, Britain and Australia enthusiastically cheered on the rush to war and the news that it was a 'Mission Accomplished.'"

Bribery is dirty stuff. So is sneaking a peak at the private messages of murder victims. But there's something even dirtier: murder, murder on the largest scale, murder coldly calculated and played out from behind a desk, in other words: war.

Murdoch is a major crime boss being threatened with parking tickets.

I hope he's brought down, but wish it were for the right reasons.

The U.S. House Judiciary Committee chased Richard Nixon out of town for the wrong reasons. The full House impeached Bill Clinton for the wrong reasons. And the worst thing the U.S. government has done in recent years, just like the worst thing News Corp. has done in recent years, has not been spying on us.

It's no secret what drove public anger at Nixon or what drives public anger at Murdoch. But, for the sake of historical precedent, it would be good for us to formally get it right.

Charge the man with selling wars!

David Swanson is a writer in Charlottesville, Va.

http://www.counterpunch.org/swanson07152011.html

[Ed Jewett]

July 14-15, 2011 --Murdoch intelligence-gathering network extended to U.S. Congress

U.S. Congressional sources have confirmed to WMR that the U.S. Capitol Police and other congressional officials shared sensitive information on members of Congress with Rupert Murdoch's media outlets in Washington, including Fox News, in a manner similar to the situation in the United Kingdom where reporters for Murdoch's now-defunct News of the World bribed British law enforcement officials for sensitive information on public officials and private citizens.

Representative Peter King (R-NY) has already leveled charges that News of the World reporters tried to bribe U.S. law enforcement officials for phone records and transcripts of wiretaps of victims of the 9/11 attack. King did not elaborate on why law enforcement would have found it necessary, in the first place, to wiretap the conversations of 9/11 victims and their surviving next-of-kin.

On March 28, 2007, WMR first reported the relationship between the newly-appointed U.S. Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Terrance Gainer, who was formerly the chief of the U.S. Capitol Police, and Fox News in three highly-publicized incidents involving only Democratic members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. The three incidents involved Fox News receiving information directly from Gainer on incidents involving then-Representative Cynthia McKinney (D-GA), then-Representative Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), and an aide to Senator Jim Webb (D-VA).

After a highly-publicized scuffle involving McKinney and an aggressive U.S. Capitol Police officer, one in which McKinney was physically assaulted by the officer, Fox News was the first to report the incident. The media hype resulting from the incident resulted in a criminal referral to the US Attorney for the District of Columbia. Shortly after Gainer resigned as chief and his being appointed by Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid, Representative Kennedy was involved in a minor automobile accident on Capitol Hill. Again, Fox News was the first to receive the information about the incident and Gainer stated publicly that Kennedy should have been given a sobriety test by the Capitol cops.

The third incident involved Phillip Thompson, the executive assistant to Virginia Democratic Senator Jim Webb, who was arrested by the Capitol Police at the Russell Senate Office Building for carrying a loaded pistol allegedly given to him by Webb. The Capitol Police enforced a DC law in force at the time that prohibited anyone other than law enforcement officers from carrying weapons in the District. Webb said he has a license to carry a concealed weapon in Virginia and Thompson, an ex-Marine, inadvertently carried the weapon into the building after dropping Webb off at the airport. WMR's March 2007 report stated: "Details of the [Thompson] incident were leaked by the cops to Fox News and other neo-con outlets." WMR also reported that the leaks by US Capitol Police and Sergeant-at-Arms staff also occurred in the cases of McKinney and Kennedy.

Gainer is a long-time Republican who unsuccessfully challenged incumbent Richard M. Daley, Jr. as the Republican candidate for Cook County (Illinois) State's Attorney in 1988. Gainer got his start in law enforcement as a rookie Chicago cop in 1968 where he helped put down riots at the Democratic National Comvention, a melee that saw Chicago cops clubbing anti-Vietnam War protesters.

As U.S. Senate Sergeant-at-Arms, Gainer is responsible for the installation and maintenance of the Senate's telecommunications networks and computer and other equipment, including those that handle Senators' e-mail, phone calls, faxes, Blackberry tweets, and photocopies of documents.

Some members of Congress have indicated the investigation of Murdoch's News Corporation's information-gathering practices warrant a full-scale investigation in the United States. Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) told CNN, "My bet is we'll find some criminal stuff . . . This is going to be a huge issue." Rockefeller said he may launch his own investigation. Perhaps he might want to start with the Senate's Sergeant-at-Arms and ask Harry Reid why he chose to appoint Gainer, a Republican, to the post after evidence surfaced that tied Gainer to leaks of law enforcement information to Fox News.

In Britain, law enforcement officials, including royal guards, reportedly asked the News of the World for money in exchange for personal information about the Royal family, including Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip, Prince Charles, Duchess of Cornwall Camilla, Duchess of Cambridge Catherine, and others. While he was Chancellor of the Exchequer and Prime Minister, Gordon Brown was also subjected to private communication surveillance by private detectives who had a close relationship with law enforcement agencies, including Scotland Yard.

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/20110714

[Ed Jewett]

Wayne Madsen (Washington)

Murdoch was caught spying on his chums and others for red meat. He crossed the line. Only the rich and powerful, after all, are entitled to privacy. In the backwash of all this, a disgusting propaganda mouthpiece for the neocons and Israel takes a major hit

However, the official inquiry set up by Cameron is rigged. It is headed by Judge Brian Leveson. His Wikipedia entry for "personal life" is short and sweet, which says it all. A Judge Richard Goldstone redux is in the works.

July 14-15, 2011 -- ON-TOPIC DAILY CHAT Blog
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/20110714_1

[Magda Hassan]

HACKERSShare



#AntiSec Hackers Spill News of the World Chief Rebekah Brooks' Email Login to Entire Internet (Updated)

Sam Biddle The fruits of today's Sun UK hack are starting to dangle down: LulzSec (out of retirement?) and Anon are tweeting logins of some serious British media brass. Foremost? Rebekah Brooks, the epicenter of England's voicemail hacking scandal.Update: phone numbers!
The tweet divulged the email and password info for one Rebekah WadeBrooks' maiden namealong with many others from Murdoch's tabloid upper crust:

Harvey ShawPublishing Operations Team Manager, News InternationalPhone number
Pete PictonSun Online EditorPhone number
Lee WellsEditorial Support Manager at News InternationalEmail and Password
Bill AkassManaging Editor, News of the WorldEmail and password
Chris HampartsoumianFormer Online Editor at timeonline.co.ukPhone number
Danny RogersSun Online Editorial ManagerEmail and password

This trickle is probably only the start. LulzSec appears to be hard at work squeezing more logins out of The Sun's servers:

We are battling with The Sun admins right now - I think they are losing. The boat has landed... >:]

In other words, expect morethough the only login fish bigger than Brooks would be Murdoch's.
Update: AntiSec operators have tweeted phone numbers for The Sun's online editor, Pete Picton, along with two other (lesser) Sun editorial figures.
http://gizmodo.com/5822416/antisec-hacke...mail-login

[Magda Hassan]

LulzSec hacks scandal-hit News International websites
Lulz Security hacker group on Monday attacked the website of the Rupert Murdoch owned Sun newspaper, replacing the online version with a fake story pronouncing the mogul's death.


AFP - Lulz Security hacker group on Monday attacked the website of the Rupert Murdoch owned Sun newspaper, replacing the online version with a fake story pronouncing the mogul's death.
The tabloid quickly took down reports that the 80-year-old had been found dead in his garden after ingesting palladium but visitors to the site were redirected to LulzSec's Twitter feed, which celebrated the high-profile attack.
The group also claimed to have hacked the homepage of the phone-hack scandal hit News International, the Sun's parent company, and the webpage of sister paper The Times was also inaccessible.
"We have owned Sun/News of the World - that story is simply phase 1 - expect the lulz to flow in coming days," a message from the group warned.
Another message taunted "We have joy we have fun, we have messed up Murdoch's Sun"
A News International spokeswoman said the company was "aware" of the attack.
The hacker collective said it was "sitting on their (the Sun's) emails" and was prepared to publicise them on Tuesday.
Lulz has been in the spotlight after taking credit for cyberattacks on high-profile companies including Sony and Nintendo.
http://www.france24.com/en/20110719-lulz...l-websites

[Magda Hassan]

In a recent interview with Russia Today, Afshin Rattansi, a Middle Eastern affairs journalist who's appeared on the BBC, CNN and Bloomberg, said that he believes "Fox News is finished" if U.S. authorities can prove that News Corporation employees attempted to hack into the voicemails of terror attack victims killed on Sept. 11, 2001.
"The Democrats have nothing much to do, but they all hate one influential cable channel: Fox News," he said. "I'm hearing, if the 9/11 victims have been hacked by subsidiaries of News Corp., then Fox News is finished."
This video is from Russia Today, broadcast Sunday, July 17, 2011.

[Keith Millea]

I still don't trust LulzSec

It's just a feeling..........:popworm: