Subject: The Murdoch Archipelago, by Bruce Page - review by Alexander
Cockburn
(1) How MI6 Sold the Iraq War, by Nicholas Rufford
(2) Chomsky's Interpretation of the EU Poll on World Threats
(3) to (5) 9/11 Insider Trading
(6) The Murdoch Archipelago, by Bruce Page - review by Alexander
Cockburn
(7) Rhodes Conspiracy cf Open Borders
(1) How MI6 Sold the Iraq War, by Nicholas Rufford
Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2003 22:59:40 -0500 From: "MER - Mid-East
Realities -
MiddleEast.Org" <MERL@middleeast.org>
How MI6 Sold the Iraq War, by Nicholas Rufford
The Sunday Times, December 28, 2003
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-944831,00.html
12/28/03: (The Times - London): THE Secret Intelligence Service has run
an
operation to gain public support for sanctions and the use of military
force
in Iraq. The government yesterday confirmed that MI6 had organised
Operation
Mass Appeal, a campaign to plant stories in the media about Saddam
Hussein's
weapons of mass destruction.
The revelation will create embarrassing questions for Tony Blair in the
run-up
to the publication of the report by Lord Hutton into the circumstances
surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly, the government weapons expert.
A senior official admitted that MI6 had been at the heart of a campaign
launched in the late 1990s to spread information about Saddam's
development of
nerve agents and other weapons, but denied that it had planted
misinformation.
"There were things about Saddam's regime and his weapons that the
public
needed to know," said the official.
The admission followed claims by Scott Ritter, who led 14 inspection
missions
in Iraq, that MI6 had recruited him in 1997 to help with the propaganda
effort. He described meetings where the senior officer and at least two
other
MI6 staff had discussed ways to manipulate intelligence material.
"The aim was to convince the public that Iraq was a far greater
threat than it
actually was," Ritter said last week.
He said there was evidence that MI6 continued to use similar propaganda
tactics up to the invasion of Iraq earlier this year. "Stories ran
in the
media about secret underground facilities in Iraq and ongoing programmes
(to
produce weapons of mass destruction)," said Ritter. "They were
sourced to
western intelligence and all of them were garbage."
Kelly, himself a former United Nations weapons inspector and colleague
of
Ritter, might also have been used by MI6 to pass information to the
media.
"Kelly was a known and government-approved conduit with the
media," said
Ritter.
Hutton's report is expected to deliver a verdict next month on whether
intelligence was misused in order to promote the case for going to war.
Hutton
heard evidence that Kelly was authorised by the Foreign Office to speak
to
journalists on Iraq. Kelly was in close touch with the "Rockingham
cell", a
group of weapons experts that received MI6 intelligence.
Blair justified his backing for sanctions and for the invasion of Iraq
on the
grounds that intelligence reports showed Saddam was working to acquire
chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. The use of MI6 as a "back
channel"
for promoting the government's policies on Iraq was never discovered
during
the Hutton inquiry and is likely to cause considerable disquiet among
MPs.
A key figure in Operation Mass Appeal was Sir Derek Plumbly, then
director of
the Middle East department at the Foreign Office and now Britain's
ambassador
to Egypt. Plumbly worked closely with MI6 to help to promote Britain's
Middle
East policy.
The campaign was judged to be having a successful effect on public
opinion.
MI6 passed on intelligence that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass
destruction
and rebuilding its arsenal.
Poland, India and South Africa were initially chosen as targets for the
campaign because they were non-aligned UN countries not supporting the
British
and US position on sanctions. At the time, in 1997, Poland was also a
member
of the UN security council.
Ritter was a willing accomplice to the alleged propaganda effort when
first
approached by MI6's station chief in New York. He obtained approval to
co-operate from Richard Butler, then executive chairman of the UN
Special
Commission on Iraq Disarmament.
Ritter met MI6 to discuss Operation Mass Appeal at a lunch in London in
June
1998 at which two men and a woman from MI6 were present. The Sunday
Times is
prevented by the Official Secrets Act from publishing their names.
Ritter had previously met the MI6 officer at Vauxhall Cross, the
service's
London headquarters. He asked Ritter for information on Iraq that could
be
planted in newspapers in India, Poland and South Africa from where it
would
"feed back" to Britain and America.
Ritter opposed the Iraq war but this is the first time that he has named
members of British intelligence as being involved in a propaganda
campaign. He
said he had decided to "name names" because he was frustrated
at "an official
cover-up" and the "misuse of intelligence".
"What MI6 was determined to do by the selective use of intelligence
was to
give the impression that Saddam still had WMDs or was making them and
thereby
legitimise sanctions and military action against Iraq," he said.
Recent reports suggest America has all but abandoned hopes of finding
weapons
of mass destruction in Iraq and that David Kay, head of the Iraq Survey
Group,
has resigned earlier than expected, frustrated that his resources have
been
diverted to tracking down insurgents.
(2) Chomsky's Interpretation of the EU Poll on World Threats
Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2003 09:43:59 -0800 From: Jeff Blankfort <jblankfort@earthlink.net>
I sent this message twice yesterday and apparently it disappeared in the
ether
so I am trying again.
On Friday, listeners to Democracy Now! heard Prof. Noam Chomsky's speech
at
Columbia University on November 20th. It was an event honoring the late
Prof.
Edward Said whose position on the role and power of the Israel lobby was
distinctly different from that of Chomsky. Chomsky's otherwise excellent
speech was marred, in my opinion, by his refusal to see Israel as
anything but
a client state of the United States and his unwillingness to deal with
the
efforts of past administrations to get Israel to withdraw from all of
the
territories it occupied in 1967. Here are the two portions of the speech
with
which I take issue with him.
Jeff Blankfort
Noam Chomsky at Columbia U, Nov. 20, 2003 as heard on Democracy Now!:
Chomsky: "A couple of weeks ago, there was a European Union poll
which aroused
some interest here. The poll asked Europeans who they thought was the
greatest
threat to world peace. It turned out the United States was ranked right
next
to North Korea and Iran. Same percentage. Well, that was felt to be a
surprise
but it shouldn't have been a surprise because that's what polls have
been
showing for a year, over a year, over growing concern and fear that the
United
States is out of control under the present leadership and is a
tremendous
threat to peace. Actually, the poll, rather the commentary on the polls,
focused on something else, namely the United States, North Korea and
Iran,
were ranked right below Israel which was ranked as the greatest threat
to
peace. My suspicion is that's because the questions in the poll were
wrongly
asked. You have to be really careful reading polls. Israel, in itself,
is not
a threat, much of a threat at all, but US support for Israel is an
enormous
threat to world peace, and I presume, that's what people were answering,
however the question was phrased. And if that's correct, then, major
threats
to peace in Europe are perceived as US support for Israel which is the
regional super power and US actions elsewhere in the world. Now, if
that's the
right interpretation, then the polls are reflecting an understanding of
phenomena that are real and important and widely understood. .."
There have been many comments about this poll but none, thus far, until
that
of Prof. Chomsky, which would suggest that, irrespective of the wording
of the
question, that the 59% of Europeans who indicated that Israel is a
threat to
world peace don't really believe that, and that they only consider it to
be a
threat to world peace because of its support by the United States, and
moreover, that Israel is not a threat by itself.
His conclusion is rather astonishing and certainly belied by the poll's
numbers which show that more Europeans apparently see Israel as a threat
to
world peace than they do the US, by a 59% to 53% margin. If what Chomsky
says
had any validity those poll numbers would at least be reversed. As it
is, he
offers no evidence to support his conclusion. His statement is also
belied by
Israel's history which included the threat of using nuclear weapons
during the
1973 war as a means of blackmailing the US to rush aid in the form of
conventional weaponry to confront the Egyptian and Syrian attack and
that
Israel remains a major nuclear threat not only to the Middle East..
Chomsky: "Another contributing factor to this extremely dangerous
amalgam is
the US support for Israel's continued rejection of a long standing
international consensus on a political settlement of the
Israel-Palestine
issue and its ongoing actions to undermine any possibility that a
political
settlement can be reached. Always, crucially, with decisive US support,
otherwise those actions are impossible. Now for 30 years now the US has
been,
unilaterally, and that's worth stressing, unilaterally blocking the
possibility of a political settlement and providing the decisive
diplomatic,
economic and military means that permit the actions that step by step
make any
such settlement impossible. That is dramatically true right now. It's
all been
consistently suppressed in the doctrinal system and now, of course, if
it's to
be even mentioned, eliminated from history by the usual means, by the
convenient doctrine of change of course. Well, this has been decisive
for 30
years and it's going on. We should pay attention to it if we care about
the
future."
Here, Chomsky repeats what has become one of his standard mantras which
is, at
best, an oversimplification of the complicated relationship between the
US and
Israel which as often as not, has seen the Israeli lobby (whose role and
power
Chomsky has made a principle of dismissing) and the Congress which it
holds in
thrall on one side and the State Department (until Bill Clinton) on the
other,
with the president in between. Beginning with the Secretary of State
William
Rogers Plan in 1969 under Nixon, every US president has made an effort
or come
up with a plan, including the Schultz Plan under Reagan, to get Israel
out of
the territories it occupied in 1967, not for the benefit of the
Palestinians,
the Syrians and until 1978, the Egyptians, but because it was seen by
the
State Department has being beneficial for US regional interests.
On every occasion, except one, the lobby was victorious, and that was
when
Carter pushed through Camp David, although it required massive bribes to
Israel, and secondarily to Egypt, to do it. Israel did not want to give
up the
Sinai and neither did it's lobby. PM Begin immediately tested Egypt by
invading Lebanon before the treaty went into effect and Sadat responded
by
doing nothing which has been its position regarding the Israel-Palestine
issue
ever since. In March of 1978, Carter demanded that Begin withdraw
Israelis
troops from Lebanon which he reluctantly did, again losing points within
the
organized Jewish community., Then, despite Carter's very public demands
that
he stop, Begin began actively building settlements in the territories.
Ronald Reagan had a number of humiliations at the hands of Israel but
none was
more pointed than what happened when he called on Sharon to let up on
his
siege of Beirut in 1982. Sharon's response was to bomb Beirut the very
next
day at 2:42 and 3:38 in the afternoon which just happened to be the two
resolutions calling for Israeli withdrawal from the occupied
territories.
There are those, such as Chomsky, who think that all of the statements
by the
various presidents calling on Israel to do this or that and which are
publicly
rebuffed by Israel are simply for show and to appease the Arab world,
but does
anyone, without a vested interest in their preciously held theories to
the
contrary, seriously believe that one US president after another would
willingly accept to be publicly humiliated by a country that he could,
if he
had the power to do so, bring to its knees virtually overnight?. But,
due to
the ability of "the lobby" to buy and intimidate the
overwhelming majority of
both houses of Congress, and it's uncontested influence over the media ,
no
president since Eisenhower has been able to do that.
Jeff Blankfort
(3) 9/11 Insider Trading
Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2003 23:23:03 -0800 From: "Mike Ruppert"
<mruppert@copvcia.com>
> Gentlemen: Can we all unite on a single task: finding out
> who placed the orders for the "put" options in the days
> immediately before 9/11? Discussions I've had in the
> enclosed e-mail seem to indicate this information is
> available and not protected by financial disclosure
> restrictions. Please examine the enclosed and brainstorm
> how we can get this information into the public sphere.
> It could be the thread to unravel the mystery.
> Discovering the names of those who apparently had prior
> knowledge of 9/11 as indicated by their "savvy" bets on
> the fortunes of United and American airlines are a
> necessary first step toward interrogating these
> individuals to find out where they got their information,
> something the law enforcement community should be
> doing but obviously isn't.
> Best wishes, John Kaminski
All of this information has been posted and verified on my website for
more
than two years. The head of the AB Brown unit was Mayo Shattuck.
Shattuck
resigned on September 12th. It was not reported on until the 14th.
And it is incorrect that trading records are publicly available. They
are
protected under banking and financial privacy legislation. Only the
government
can access these records; either with a search warrant or a court order.
It
was done and the results have never been disclosed. It would be a
criminal
offense for a journalist or a private citizen to obtain these records
independently. That's why it has not been done.
I covered this ground two years ago in great detail.
Mike Ruppert http://www.fromthewilderness.com
(4) 9/11 Insider Trading
Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 03:06:38 EST From: WalterBurien@aol.com
Mike:
Not quite true. The government trading accounts push 65% of the paper in
these
markets. Government investment funds are required disclosure if pursued.
The
CFTC and SEC data tape is definitive for volume and positions held every
second of the day.
The general position streams have no restrictions from disclosure
between
exchange members. They share it live within the financial community of
exchange members who are producing and clearing the data.. When it comes
down
to individual accounts, private are confidential but government
investment
funds handled by private managers are not and cannot be held
confidential if
pried open by any definitive court order from a competent jurisdiction.
Management for all intents and purposes waves nondisclosure rules when
handling government funds. An intentional cover-up on the disclosure
coming
forth in this arena per overall government investment funds positions
held
would be nothing other than treason of the strongest degree, under any
color
of refusal.
The showing of derivative transactions both on the domestic and
international
fronts would burn the government's facade alive. Based on the fund
trackers,
government fund accounts were holding their largest short positions
"ever"
going into 911.
Walter Burien (AKA: Bubien) CTA (Commodity Trading Advisor) of 14 years
(1978-92) National Sales Manager: US Trading Championship - Money
Managers
Verified Ratings for 10 years. (1982-1992)
(5) 9/11 Insider Trading
Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 15:31:02 +0700 From: "President, USA
Exile Govt." <prez@usa-exile.org>
Dear Colleagues, Here's some correspondence relevant to this matter.
Perhaps a
sit-in at the "Justice" Dept would be helpful? --- Pondo
From: "President, USA Exile Govt." <prez@usa-exile.org>
Date: Wed Aug 6, 2003 8:41:09 PM Asia/Bangkok To: catherine
<catherine@solari.com>
Subject: 9-11 Insider Trading
Dear Catherine Austin Fitts, Greetings to you. A couple days ago I was
reading
the transcript of that German documentary you made with Kyle Hence,
Allan
Duncan and others. I noticed your interest in the matter of 9-11 insider
trading. I'm enclosing a couple futile efforts I made towards receiving
relevant info about this. Have you any suggestions for a path which
might lead
to real results? For example, do you know a lawyer who might represent
me in
some sort of request or litigation within what's left of the Freedom of
Information Act? Both my letters below (in reverse chronological order)
received the automatic response included at the bottom of this. Worse
than
merely Kafkaesque! Thank you for any help you can provide. With highest
regards, Keith Lampe, Ponderosa Pine
(6) The Murdoch Archipelago, by Bruce Page - review by Alexander
Cockburn
Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 01:01:07 +1000 From: "makichris"
<chrispaul@netpci.com>
I Am Thy Father's Ghost"
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn12272003.html
It has been astounding that a world-scale monster such as Rupert Murdoch
has
thus far fared well at the hands of his various profilists and
biographers.
Criticisms of him have either been too broad-brush to be useful, or too
tempered with Waugh-derived facetiousness about press barons. Murdoch is
far
too fearsome an affront to any civilized values to escape with mere
facetiousness.
Now at last Murdoch is properly burdened with the chronicler he
deserves. The
Murdoch Archipelago, (just published by Simon and Schuster
in the UK) is
written by Bruce Page, a distinguished, Australian-raised journalist who
has
lived and worked in England for many years, perhaps best known for his
work in
leading one of the great investigative enterprises of twentieth century
journalism, the Insight team at the (pre-Murdoch) London Sunday
Times. As an
essay in understanding what the function of the press should be in a
democratic society, Page's book is an important one, focused of the
world's
leading villains, who controls such properties as Fox in the US, huge
slices
of the press in the UK and Australia, a tv operation in the Chinese
Peoples
Republic. Most recently he's been in the news, because the Federal
Communications Commission, chaired by Colin Powell's son Michael,
rewarded
Murdoch's tub-thumping for Bush by voting 3-2 to allow his News Corp to
to
buy control of Hughes Electronics and its DirecTV satellite operation
from
General Motors in a deal valued at $6.6 billion. The FCC's green light
will
give Rupert Murdoch even more power in determining what material gets
beamed
to television sets across US and how much consumers pay for them. I had
some
brief and vivid personal encounters with Murdoch in the late 1970s at
the
Village Voice and I've known Page for many years. (A biographico-political
footnote: in the late 1960s I shared billing with him as one of the four
helmsmen of the London-based Free Communications Group, whose manifesto
about
the media and democracy was set forth in the first issue of our very
occasional periodical, The Open Secret. (The other two helmsmen were Gus
McDonald, latterly a Blair-ennobled Labor enforcer in the House of
Lords, and
Neal Ascherson, most recently the author of an interesting book, Stone
Voices:
The Search for Scotland.)
I talked to Page about his book in London in mid-November in the midst
of the
twin invasions of Bush and Murdoch, the latter briefly alighting in
London to
crush a rising by some shareholders in British Sky Broadcasting who had
been
claiming that the company was being run by Murdoch as a private fiefdom
in a
manner injurious to their interests.
It was a characteristic Murdoch performance, marked by his usual
arrogance,
thuggery and deception. In one particularly spectacular act of corporate
contempt he first told the shareholders at the AGM that Tony Ball, moved
over
to make way for Murdoch's son James, had received no severance payment,
and
then revealed briefly thereafter that lbs10 million was being paid to
Ball to
make sure he would not compete will Sky's now non-existent rivals. The
true
function of the $10 million is more likely to ensure Ball's future
discretion
since the latter knows the whereabouts of many bodies whose disinterment
might
inconvenience Murdoch, throwing an unpleasing light on Sky's unfettered
(by
Blair's regulators) use of its Thatcher-derived monopoly.
Amid his rampages at BskyB Murdoch gave an interview to the BBC in which
he
placed Tony Blair on notice that the loyalty of Murdoch's newspapers was
not
to be taken for granted. Referring to himself respectfully in the first
person
plural, Murdoch was kind enough to intimate that "we will not
quickly forget
the courage of Tony Blair" but then made haste to emphasize that he
also
enjoys friendly relations with the new Tory leader Michael Howard. On
the mind
of this global pirate is a topic in which one would have thought he
would have
had scant interest, namely national sovereignty. Murdoch professed
himself
exercised by the matter of the EU constitution. Slipping on the mantle
of
Britishness, Murdoch pronounced that "I don't like the idea of any
more
abdication of our sovereignty in economic affairs or anything
else."
The Guardian found this altogether too brazen and editorialized the
following
Monday that "Rupert Murdoch is no more British than George W. Bush.
Once upon
a time, it's true, he was an Australian with Scottish antecedents. But
some
time ago he came to the view that his citizenship was an inconvenience
and
resolved to change it for an American passport. He does not live in this
country and it is not clear that he is entitled to use 'we' in any
meaningful
sense of shared endeavor. To be lectured on sovereignty by someone who
junked
his own citizenship for commercial advantage is an irony to which Mr
Murdoch
is evidently blind."
Then the Guardian got a bit rougher: "Readers have to be put on
notice that
the view expressed in Murdoch titles have not been freely arrived at on
the
basis of normal journalistic considerations."
This brings me back to Page's book, whose core thesis is that Murdoch
offers
his target governments a privatized version of a state propaganda
service,
manipulated without scruple and with no regard for truth. His price
takes the
form of vast government favors such as tax breaks, regulatory relief (as
with
the recent FCC ruling on the acquisition of Direct TV) monopoly markets
and so
forth. The propaganda is undertaken with the utmost cynicism, whether
it's the
stentorian fake populism and soft porn in the UK's Sun and News of the
World,
or shameless bootlicking of the butchers of Tiananmen Square. I asked
Page if
he thought this a fair summary.
Page: "Your precis of my argument is exact. It may be worth
noting that
reviewers of Archipelago drawn from the still-persistent Old
Fleetstrasse
culture have (in the words of my old colleague Lew Chester) produced
'innumerable contortions devised to miss its main argument'. Peter
Preston
stated that 'Bruce' (we are not on first-name terms) failed to offer any
thesis of how it was all done. Similarly Anthony Howard, who of course
has
worked many years under the Murdoch banner. You may recall the first
three
paragraphs of the book:
'Rupert Murdoch denies quite flatly that he seeks or deals in political
favours. 'Give me an example!' he cried in 1999 when William Shawcross
interviewed him for Vanity Fair. 'When have we ever asked for anything?'
'Shawcross didn't take up the challenge. Rather, he endorsed Murdoch's
denial,
by saying that Rupert had never lied to him.
'We can show that Murdoch was untruthful--and Shawcross far too
tolerant, both
in the interview and in his weighty biography of Murdoch. Not only has
Murdoch
sought and received political favours: most of the critical steps in the
transmutation of News Limited, his inherited business, into present-day
Newscorp were dependent on such things. Nor is there essential change in
his
operations as the new century gets under way, and he prepares his sons
to
extend the dynasty.'
I worked quite hard with the Simon & Schuster lawyers to make this
so blunt as
to show that anyone missing the point was practicing voluntary
astigmatism.
On sovereignty: my belief is that Murdoch and his like deeply fear every
kind
of collaboration between effective democratic entities. They can exist
only in
an offshore domain from which they truck and barter with comprador
elites.
Sadly for them, there is an antagonistic tendency which every now and
then
makes crucial advances: if and when the OECD countries organise a viable
tax
system, Newscorp is toast. The US and the EC have made more progress in
that
direction than is generally realised. Only crooks really like offshore,
and
crooks have no guaranteed monopoly over the world. Murdoch's ludicrous
remarks
on the BBC are a reminder that the whole brood constitute a black hole
for
irony: as does the coronation of his son James. Murdoch rarely takes
part in
open democratic processes, as the results are too chancy for him. But
the
Australian referendum on the monarchy struck him as a sure thing, so he
plunged in taking his boys with him. Now the failure of that campaign
involved
many complexities, but its root cause was that while the Oz
working-class
tradition (colour it Irish) has no great love for Mrs Windsor, it also
doesn't
think she has done much harm. But these same traditionalists noted that
many
riders on the republican bandwagon were practiced class malefactors,
Rupert
conspicuously so. In wonderful evidence of this, aonther of Murdoch's
sons,
Lachlan, stated that he could not see the justice of a system (i.e.
monarchy)
in which you got a job through inheritance alone.
The Oz character has flaws like any other, but it is nearly impossible
to be
an Australian and have so devastating an incapacity for self-mockery.
When I
was asked in various TV and radio spots for comments on the James/BSkyB
business, there was usually some question of whether there was abuse of
power
involved. My answer was to say yes, of course this is pure abuse of
power. But
such abuse is Newscorp's product: it's what the company sells. The
purchasers,
of course, are deluded politicians. It's absurd to fancy that Newscorp's
internal affairs would be conducted on any other lines.
On one radio show I was put up with a certain Teresa Wise of Accenture
(formerly Andersen Consulting, limb of Rupert's defunct auditors). She
purported to knot her brow over the question of Newscorp's governance,
and
produced one of the true standard lines:
'It's very easy to demonize Mister Murdoch . . .' Into the sagacious
pause
which would clearly have been followed by a laissez-passer, I managed to
insert: 'Can we have a little less of this? It is actually very
difficult, and
very hard work, to demonize Rupert. This is because he is in fact
demonic, and
he frightens a great many people in and around the media industries.
Nobody
should say how easy it is to demonize unless they have unless they have
some
working experience of the process.' We then had a period of silence from
her.
Murdoch often denies he is the world's most powerful media boss. There's
a
natural discretion in those who have unelected political influence: as
their
power lacks legitimacy, they prefer it to pass unnoticed. But it goes
somewhat
further in Murdoch's case. Though his Australian-based News Corporation
controls newspapers and broadcasting networks to a unique extent, and
the
governments of America, Australia, Britain and China treat him with
great
solicitude, Murdoch considers himself a simple entrepreneur ringed by
relentless opponents.
He is in reality the man who for whom Margaret Thatcher set aside
British
monopoly law so that he could buy The Times and the Sunday Times, and to
whom
she later handed monopoly-control of British satellite television. His
newspapers supported Thatcher with ferocious zeal -- but switched
eagerly to
Tony Blair's side once it was clear that New Labour would leave Murdoch
in
possession of the marketplace advantages bequeathed by conservative
predecessors. But Murdoch (who likes a royal plural) says: 'We are . . .
not
about protectionism through legislation and cronyism . . . '
In similar transactions, Ronald Reagan's right-wing administration let
Murdoch
dynamite US media laws and set up the Fox network and a left-wing
Australian
administration let him take monopoly control of the country's newspaper
market. But to Murdoch, who thinks himself a victim of 'liberal
totalitarians', this is no less than he deserves. He observes no
connection
between the business concessions governments award to Newscorp and the
support
Newscorp affords to such benefactors -- deep subservience in the case of
China's totalitarian elite: 'We are about daring and doing for
ourselves' he believes.
Cockburn: But surely he retains some sense of irony, of cynicism,
when he
professes such nonsense?
Page: In Alice in Wonderland the White Queen says she can believe
'six
impossible things before breakfast', but Murdoch easily outdoes her.
Sigmund
Freud's grandson Matthew, a celebrated London public-relations man, is
married
to Rupert's daughter Elisabeth and has said with surprise that his
father-in-law actually believes the stuff in his own newspapers.
We may be sure Mr Freud is not so credulous. Nor are most people who
know
Newscorp's publications. The London Sun coins money. But opinion-surveys
show
less than one in seven readers trust what it says (however diverting).
In
legend Murdoch has an infallible popular touch, displayed in escalating
circulations. But the legend misleads somewhat: Murdoch is not
commercially
invincible in areas where governments can't help. The plinth of his
British
empire, the rigorously prurient News of the World, was selling more than
six
million copies when he bought it: since, half its sales have vanished,
while
other papers have gained. The New York Post consistently loses money,
and most
companies would close it.
There are many curiosities -- political, editorial, financial, fiscal
--about
Newscorp's media ascendancy. But central to it is the psychology of the
Murdoch family, and the credulousness Matthew Freud diagnosed. Murdoch
is the
man who promoted the 'diaries' of Adolf Hitler, and today believes in
Saddam
Hussein's Weapons of Mass Destruction -- scarcely more real, though the
two
dictators indeed share attributes. For politicians in Beijing,
Washington and
London this psychology makes Mr Murdoch an ideal media ally. They have
illusions to peddle: Murdoch may be relied on to believe, and try to
persuade
others. Beijing, for instance, asserts that China cannot prosper except
by
accepting totalitarian Communist rule --ignoring, therefore the Party's
matchless record of criminal incompetence. Rupert's achievements here
are
notorious, but those of his son James hardly less. James' speech
celebrating
in Rupert's presence the 'strong stomach' which enables them both to
admire
Chinese repressive technique shocked even the rugged investors hearing
it.
It appears that Rupert considers James his successor, planning to give
him
command of BSkyB, the British satellite-TV broadcaster which Newscorp
wants to
link into a worldwide system. Such an advance in media power will
require much
political aid --that of the Bush administration particularly, and there
is no
supporter of Mr Bush and his wars can outdo Rupert's enthusiasm.
Cockburn: It's awful to think that we have younger Murdochs on
hand to plague
the planet for a few more decades.
Page: Such psychology is a family tradition. Rupert inherited the
basis of
Newscorp from his Australian father Sir Keith Murdoch, a great
propagandist in
1914-18 (the 'golden age of lying'). Purportedly an independent
war-correspondent, Keith Murdoch acted in fact as political agent to
Billy
Hughes, his country's wartime prime minister: plotting with him to
conscript
thousands of young men into a bloodbath supervised by incompetent
British generals.
The plot narrowly failed -- as did an anti-Semitic intrigue against the
Australian general John Monash, whose volunteer divisions broke the
German
line. Details are an Australian concern, but we should note the success
with
which Rupert's father later posed as an heroic rebel rescuing young men
from
ruthless generals: a pioneer feat of spin-doctoring and truth-inversion.
Rupert's media still sustain his father Keith's mythology ('the
journalist who
stopped a war'). The son, born in 1931, has always lived in the shadow
of a
spurious hero, uncritically promoted.
Just such narratives characterize the 'authoritarian personality',
identified
by Theodore Adorno, and refined by later psychologists. Growth requires
us all
to make terms with our parents' real qualities --good or bad -- and
where that
process fails, authoritarian qualities appear: intolerance of
relationships
other than dominion or submission, and intolerance of the ambiguity
which
equal standing implies. Such characteristics in Murdoch are shown by the
testimony of many Newscorp veterans. Executives -- editors specially --
are
ejected, regardless of quality, at a flicker of independence. Murdoch
demands
internally the same subservience he offers to outside power.
Conformity is enforced by mind-games like Murdoch's notorious
telephone-calls
-- coming to his executives at random moments, and consisting on his own
part
chiefly of brooding silence. The technique generates fear, and those who
rebel
against it are swiftly removed. Authoritarians often possess charm -- or
skill
in flattery. But a strong component is swift, apparently decisive
judgment:
'premature closure', or jumping to conclusions. This explains the
credulousness Adorno found in authoritarians, for penetrating complex
truths
usually demands some endurance of ambiguity.
Cockburn: If the authoritarian personality is unsuited to
realistic
news-gathering, how has Murdoch achieved media pre-eminence?
Page: Journalists are insecure, because they must trade in the
unknown. Their
profession, said the sociologist Max Weber is uniquely 'accident-prone'.
Good
management may reduce this insecurity -- but the Newscorp style actually
uses
insecurity as a disciplinary tool. And the seeming assurance of the
authoritarian has tactical benefits: Murdoch can swap one attitude for
another
with zero embarrassment, and it enables him to 'deliver' newspapers to
any
power he approves of. Readers naturally grow sceptical. But this does
not yet
harm Newscorp's business model.
It would have been remarkable for Rupert to develop in non-authoritarian
fashion, given his inheritance. When his father died he had neither
graduated
from university, nor gained any real newspaper tradecraft. In order to
take
control of what was then News Limited, under the trust Sir Keith
established,
Rupert had to accept his father as a paragon of journalistic integrity:
to
convince the trustees, believers in that myth, of his desire to emulate
it.
Exactly when independence is essential for personal and professional
development, a spurious parental image descended on him. And he has
emulated
the political propagandist, not the mythological paragon.
The outcome attracts today's politicians because a sickness afflicts
them. In
all developed societies trust in politics has declined: while democracy
advances in the developing world, it finds itself ailing in its
homelands..
Finding themselves distrusted, politicians turn to for a cure to tabloid
journalism -- Murdoch's especially -- which they realise is distrusted
still
more than themselves. They do so just as victims of a slow, fatal
disease use
quack medicines if the real cure still seems too strenuous.
The real problem of politics is the increasingly complex, and therefore
occult
nature of advanced society. We fancy it has become more open, and it
somewhat
has. But progress has fallen behind the needs of better-educated, less
deferential citizens whose problems grow more daunting intellectually.
The
state for which politicians are responsible cannot explain itself to its
citizens,
It might reverse change this by opening itself far more freely to
scrutiny.
But against this the bureaucrats --public and private -- on whom
politicians
rely for administrative convenience conduct relentless guerrilla attack.
Should politicians choose to fight back, they will not lack allies, for
most
Western societies still have some competent, independent news-media and
the
demand exists among citizens. In Britain real newspapers, and
broadcasters
like the BBC continue to be trusted as Murdoch's tabloids will never be.
But
quack remedies still appeal to governments: and all Murdoch asks in
return is
a little help in extending his monopolies.
Of course if the process goes far enough, only the quack remedy will be
available, and democracy's ailment would then be terminal.
(7) Rhodes Conspiracy cf Open Borders
Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2003 21:38:44 -0800 (PST) From: Dean ******* <dean198@yahoo.com>
You speak of Cecil Rhodes and the Round Table as seeking to established
the
dominance of Britain. But if you fly to England today you could be
tempted to
think that your airplane made a stopover in India or Africa. I read one
mainstream British newspaper (The Mail I think) rejoicing in the fact
that
whites would be a minority in the UK in 50 - 100 years (as in the USA
and most
other white countries). My question is, where does all this fit in? Do
the
ruling classes want to make whites a minority? Do they have a
demographic
plan? Sure, whites will probably never cease to exist, but it does seem
that
they will be minorities, with all of the ramifications that brings. I
can't
see how that fits Rhodes' vision of white English people settling the
world.
Can you help? All thoughts appreciated.
REPLY (Peter M):
Rhodes' conspiracy has (in part) been taken over.
Given its leading role in the Anglo-American countries, taking it over
was an
easy way to change the direction of those countries.
Just before Clinton left office (after Gore lost the 2000 election), he
signed
up for the World Court & the Kyoto Protocol, both World Government
initiatives. Bush trashed them.
Bush seems to represent the original Rhodes (World Empire), Clinton the
"World
Government" takeover.
But Bush can only pursue original Rhodes objectives in alliance with
Zionists
(just as Rhodes himself relied on Rothschild to lend him money for
acquisitions). Put it another way: there are two Jewish factions in
Washington. If you split them, you can ally with one faction.
Samuel Huntington and Zbigniew Brzezinski still represent, to some
extent, the
original Rhodes idea.
But the rivalry with the Soviet Union forced a change. The USSR appealed
to
the colonised countries, to join it against the West. To defeat the
USSR, the
West had to abandon its colonialism. It instituted equality of Races, as
a
counter to the USSR's equality of Classes.
H.G. Wells enunciated the new policy in his book The Open
Conspiracy; the
quotes below are from the 1933 edition:
" The Open Conspiracy rests upon a disrespect for nationality, and
there is no
reason why it should tolerate noxious or obstructive governments because
they
hold their own in this or that patch of human territory. It lies within
the
power of the Atlantic communities to impose peace upon the world and
secure
unimpeded movement and free speech from end to end of the earth"
(p. 89).
http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/opensoc.html
Pavel Sudoplatov analysed the defeat of the USSR in these terms, in his
book
Special Tasks:
"We believed we were in a life-and-death struggle for the salvation
of our
grand experiment, the creation of a new social system that would protect
and
provide dignity for all workers ...
" ... We never learned how to incorporate and deal with diversity.
You in the
West have your weaknesses as well. The diversity in America, the
plethora of
foreign-born immigrant communities within your population, are the pride
of
your melting pot. Yet within these communities we were able to enlist
thousands of agents ready to destroy you in case war broke out between
us."
(p. 4).
http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/sudoplat.html
Joel Kotkin envisaged a world where nation-states have been abolished,
but
tribes remain.
Joel Kotkin, Tribes: How Race, Religion and Identity Determine
Success in the
New Global Economy (Random House, New York, 1993):
... "there will be no Japan, only Japanese." (p. 12)
{p. 4} ... The collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War further
boost
the prospects for global tribes. As ideologies such as "scientific
socialism"
have collapsed, the world has experienced a renaissance of interest in
the
symbols of the tribal past. ...
This remarkable historical reversal leads to our critical point:
ethnicity as
a defining factor in the evolution of the global economy. ...
In defining global tribalism, I have set out to examine five principal
groups
- the Jews, British, Japanese, Chinese and Indians - all of whom
powerfully
illustrate this phenomenon.
{p. 8} ... These ascendant ethnic groups - notably the Japanese, Chinese
and
Indians - have successfully exploited the commercial pathways created by
the
Anglo-Americans with often devastating success. ...
Like the Jews or the British, the Chinese have developed a powerful
global
diaspora, with strong communities stretched from the Southeast Asian
tropics
to the great cities of North America.
{end}
Where Joel Kotkin see Tribes, Samuel Huntington sees Civilizations:
"Civilizations are the ultimate human tribes, and the clash of
civilizations
is tribal conflict on a grand scale." (The Clash of Civilizations
and the
Remaking of World Order, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1996, p. 207). http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/huntington.html
Huntington criticises the idea that a "Universal Civilization"
is emerging,
and argues that Western Civilization is unique, not universal (The West:
Unique, Not Universal, in Foreign Affairs, November/December 1996).
Huntington
is following in the footsteps of the theoreticians of the British
Empire.
Whereas Cecil Rhodes brashly defined the Empire in terms of English
superiority (http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/rhodes-will.html),
more subtle
leaders such as Arnold Toynbee recast it as the defender and promoter of
Freedom: http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/quigley.html
Lionel Curtis, Huntington's intellectual ancestor, proclaimed that the
Empire
had a duty to rule peoples who were incapable of ruling themselves:
"Whilst enlarging its bounds in Asia, Africa, and the Pacific so as
to include
hundreds of millions who must for centuries remain incapable of assuming
the
burden of government" (The Commonwealth of Nations, MacMillian,
London, 1916,
p. 700) http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/curtis1.html
Has Cecil Rhodes' secret society, set up for promoting the Empire, been
hijacked by Zionists? http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/l-george.html
Should Nation-States protect their people from the Higher types of
Tribalism?
If the Nation-State can't or won't do this, who can?
More from Kotkin at http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/tribes.html
--
Peter Myers, 21 Blair St, Watson ACT 2602, Australia
http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers
ph +61 2 62475187
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