Archive for the 'General' Category

Targeting the contracting leeches in the “war on terror”

Published on 12 July 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Since 9/11 countless corporations are making a killing in Iraq, Afghanistan, the US and beyond. It’s a privatised dream, as the US war machine now couldn’t survive without outsourcing help (including, according to a new report, Pentagon contractors writing their own contracts).

Hackers and trouble-makers Anonymous have attacked Booz Allen Hamilton (a company with quite a background in supporting American imperialism) and released the following statement:

Hello Thar!

Today we want to turn our attention to Booz Allen Hamilton, whose core business is contractual work completed on behalf of the US federal government, foremost on defense and homeland security matters, and limited engagements of foreign governments specific to U.S. military assistance programs.

…

For the Lazy we have assembled some facts about Booz Allen. First let’s take a quick look of who these guys are. Some key personnel:

* John Michael “Mike” McConnell, Executive Vice President of Booz Allen and former Director of the National Security Agency (NSA) and former Director of National Intelligence.

* James R. Clapper, Jr., current Director of National Intelligence, former Director of Defense Intelligence.

* Robert James Woolsey Jr, former Director of National Intelligence and head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

* Melissa Hathaway, Current Acting Senior Director for Cyberspace for the National Security and Homeland Security Councils

Now let’s check out what these guys have been doing:

* Questionable involvement in the U.S. government’s SWIFT surveillance program; acting as auditors of a government program, when that contractor is heavily involved with those same agencies on other contracts. Beyond that, the implication was also made that Booz Allen may be complicit in a program (electronic surveillance of SWIFT) that may be deemed illegal by the EC.

So Murdoch will close down his own rogue outlets, yes?

Published on 12 July 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

If consistency is his thing:

Medical records disclosing that Gordon Brown’s infant son had cystic fibrosis were illegally obtained by The Sun newspaper as part of a News International campaign against him and his family, friends of the former prime minister claims.

Mr Brown was a repeated target for investigators working for the tabloid and its sister newspapers, The Sunday Times and the News of the World, it was alleged.

The newspapers obtained highly personal medical and financial information about him and his family.

The most emotive claim relates to Mr Brown’s son, Fraser, diagnosed with cystic fibrosis in 2006, soon after his birth. His condition was disclosed on The Sun’s website in November 2006, when he was four months old.

Mr Brown and his wife, Sarah, had only recently learned of their son’s condition, which often leads to a shortened lifespan. They were dismayed the paper had details of his illness.

Mrs Brown said she was sad to learn about the alleged invasions of her family’s privacy. She wrote on Twitter: “It is very personal and really hurtful if all true.”

How to beautifully capture the spirit of democracy in Malaysia

Published on 11 July 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , .

NINTH OF JULY TWO THOUSAND ELEVEN TEASER from PIXELATE PICTURES on Vimeo.

As if firing News of the World journalists is enough to save Murdoch’s credibility

Published on 11 July 2011 in General. 1 Comment Tags: , .

In his nightmares:

Rupert Murdoch’s takeover of BSkyB appeared to be dead in the water last night after proof emerged that executives at his British newspaper empire mounted a cover-up of the full scale of alleged criminal wrongdoing at the News of the World.

In another extraordinary day in the phone-hacking scandal, Downing Street sources confirmed that Government lawyers were drawing up a strategy to halt the £9bn deal which looked a certainty only a week ago.

As Nick Clegg threatened to split the Coalition by siding with a Labour plan to block the takeover, a senior Government source said last night: “We are working on a plan to suspend the deal while the police investigation is taking place. But we have to ensure it doesn’t get thrown out by judicial review.”

The U-turn came after one of News International’s own papers revealed that an internal report carried out in 2007, after the News of the World’s royal editor Clive Goodman was jailed, had found evidence that illegally accessing voicemails was more widespread at the paper – and that payments had been made to police officers.

An anonymous executive was quoted as saying that the report had been like a “ticking time bomb”. The report suggests there was a deliberate cover-up by unidentified executives at News International, which had told Parliamentary inquiries in 2007 and 2009 there was no evidence journalists other than Goodman had been involved in phone hacking, nor that it had attempted to suppress evidence of illegality.

Serco damages worker’s lives but government wants more privatised staff

Published on 11 July 2011 in General. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

Two stories today that highlight the pernicious effect of British multinational Serco in Australia.

One from today’s Australian (to its credit, the only serious newspaper tackling this question regularly):

The company running Australia’s immigration detention centres has acknowledged the work is traumatic for staff following the death of a young guard troubled by the hanging of a teenage asylum-seeker.

Kieran Webb died while holidaying with his family last Wednesday after working for six months as a security officer at the Curtin immigration detention centre in Western Australia’s far north, according to a memo to all staff from government contractor Serco last Friday.

There were no suspicious circumstances, Serco Immigration Services managing director Chris Manning wrote in the memo.

“If you feel the need for emotional support arising from the work you do, please consider speaking to someone,” he said.

“It is important we acknowledge that our line of work can at times place us in difficult and traumatic situations as we manage vulnerable people in our care.”
Five detainees have killed themselves in immigration detention centres since last September. Self-harm and threats of self-harm occur daily, and a psychologist is employed full-time by Serco to help guards deal with the fallout of acts such as lip-sewing, slashing and attempted hangings.

The Australian has been told detainees are taking increasingly dramatic steps to draw attention to their grievances. On Christmas Island last Thursday, a detainee sewed his lips together and had a friend tie him to the compound fence in a crucifix position.

On March 28, Mr Webb was among guards who cut down a 19-year-old Afghan detainee who hanged himself in his room.

Mr Webb was deeply affected by the death and by the unrest that followed, according to guards who worked alongside him at the time.

Two from United Voice, a union that represents workers:

A month after Villawood Detention Centre was burned to the ground, Serco was pushing to reduce staffing on key shifts.

The company wants to cut numbers on some shifts by as much as 50 percent.

United Voice members say the move would wreck their family lives, and reduce their ability to build relationships with detainees that could head off future trouble.

More than 120 Villawood members responded to a Union survey, panning proposed changes as family unfriendly, impractical and a health and safety risk.

Officers, predominantly working 12-hour shifts, currently get seven days off every 21 days. Under the revamp, they would have to wait 35 or 42 days for their long breaks.

United Voice assistant secretary, Peter Campise, says extending the qualifying period would be a blow to morale.

“Anything that hurts morale at the centre is a problem for our members and the whole immigration detention regime,” he said.

“United Voice rejects any changes that expose our members to increased risk.”

Meanwhile, Villawood officers are buoyed by Serco’s retreat from attempts to slash overtime rates for people required to work more than 14 hours.

Serco reduced double time payments to time and a half early in the New Year but agreed to “revert to the previous interpretation of the clause” after it became apparent member would pursue the issue..

Peter says securing back pay is now the issue.

George Galloway: “Rupert Murdoch was hacking the phones of our dead soldiers”

Published on 11 July 2011 in General. 1 Comment Tags: , .

Murdoch empire made of rock, cheese and bullets

Published on 11 July 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Al-Jazeera’s Listening Post on Syria media restrictions

Published on 10 July 2011 in General, Interviews and Video. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

The struggle for democracy in Syria has continued for most of this year. The media has been largely locked out of the country, so independent reporting has been very difficult (though local bloggers have remained essential).

Al Jazeera’s Listening Post discusses the crackdown and I was asked to comment (my last appearance on the show was in February on the Egyptian revolution). My comment is at 9.26:

Murdoch’s ethical bypass (and lieutenants who back it)

Published on 10 July 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Bruce Guthrie is a former News Limited editor and author of Man Bites Murdoch. He writes today in Fairfax papers that the challenging of the Murdoch empire reveals a hollow moral core:

In 1988, while attending a conference of News Corporation editors in Aspen, Colorado, I made the mistake of raising the thorny issue of journalistic ethics. The proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, was not amused. Murdoch, who was hosting the session, turned red, then purple, as I repeatedly asked a senior executive from his London Sun whether the publication had any ethical framework. It didn’t, the paper’s news editor finally admitted.

In most media companies that admission might have earned the executive a rebuke. But instead, I copped it, with Murdoch later dismissing me as a ”Fairfax wanker”. (For the record, I wasn’t at that point; I became one 12 months later.)

I have reflected on the episode many times since, particularly this week as the News of the World phone hacking scandal went from bad to worse and then putrid.

I left that conference more than 20 years ago concerned that Murdoch saw ethics, or at least the discussion of them, as an inconvenience that got in the way of newspaper business. If that really is the case, should we be entirely surprised that the phone hacking scandal played out at one of his titles and that it ended in its forced closure?

…

It seems inconceivable that no one at a very senior level has yet paid with their job. Rebekah Brooks, a former News of the World editor now in charge of Murdoch’s British operation, seems to have the boss’s backing and he’s not for changing. This is what happens when companies are run like personal fiefdoms. In the absence of any real shareholder pressure, people like Brooks get to hang on. At a company with a more open and broad-based share register she’d almost certainly be gone by now. News seems very comfortable with accommodating people who’d be shown the door elsewhere.

How Rupert should think about Watergate and worry

Published on 10 July 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

One half of the Watergate investigators who hasn’t spent the last decades fawning before power, Carl Bernstein, writes in Newsweek that the current Murdoch controversy has historical reverberations:

But now the empire is shaking, and there’s no telling when it will stop. My conversations with British journalists and politicians—all of them insistent on speaking anonymously to protect themselves from retribution by the still-enormously powerful mogul—make evident that the shuttering of News of the World, and the official inquiries announced by the British government, are the beginning, not the end, of the seismic event.

News International, the British arm of Murdoch’s media empire, “has always worked on the principle of omertà: ‘Do not say anything to anybody outside the family, and we will look after you,’ ” notes a former Murdoch editor who knows the system well. “Now they are hanging people out to dry. The moment you do that, the omertà is gone, and people are going to talk. It looks like a circular firing squad.”

News of the World was always Murdoch’s “baby,” one of the largest dailies in the English-speaking world, with 2.6 million readers. As anyone in the business will tell you, the standards and culture of a journalistic institution are set from the top down, by its owner, publisher, and top editors. Reporters and editors do not routinely break the law, bribe policemen, wiretap, and generally conduct themselves like thugs unless it is a matter of recognized and understood policy. Private detectives and phone hackers do not become the primary sources of a newspaper’s information without the tacit knowledge and approval of the people at the top, all the more so in the case of newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch, according to those who know him best.

As one of his former top executives—once a close aide—told me, “This scandal and all its implications could not have happened anywhere else. Only in Murdoch’s orbit. The hacking at News of the World was done on an industrial scale. More than anyone, Murdoch invented and established this culture in the newsroom, where you do whatever it takes to get the story, take no prisoners, destroy the competition, and the end will justify the means.”

“In the end, what you sow is what you reap,” said this same executive. “Now Murdoch is a victim of the culture that he created. It is a logical conclusion, and it is his people at the top who encouraged lawbreaking and hacking phones and condoned it.”

Could Murdoch eventually be criminally charged? He has always surrounded himself with trusted subordinates and family members, so perhaps it is unlikely. Though Murdoch has strenuously denied any knowledge at all of the hacking and bribery, it’s hard to believe that his top deputies at the paper didn’t think they had a green light from him to use such untraditional reportorial methods. Investigators are already assembling voluminous records that demonstrate the systemic lawbreaking at News of the World, and Scotland Yard seems to believe what was happening in the newsroom was endemic at the highest levels at the paper and evident within the corporate structure. Checks have been found showing tens of thousands of dollars of payments at a time.

For this reporter, it is impossible not to consider these facts through the prism of Watergate. When Bob Woodward and I came up against difficult ethical questions, such as whether to approach grand jurors for information (which we did, and perhaps shouldn’t have), we sought executive editor Ben Bradlee’s counsel, and he in turn called in the company lawyers, who gave the go-ahead and outlined the legal issues in full. Publisher Katharine Graham was informed. Likewise, Bradlee was aware when I obtained private telephone and credit-card records of one of the Watergate figures.

All institutions have lapses, even great ones, especially by individual rogue employees—famously in recent years at The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the three original TV networks. But can anyone who knows and understands the journalistic process imagine the kind of tactics regularly employed by the Murdoch press, especially at News of the World, being condoned at the Post or the Times?

And then there’s the other inevitable Watergate comparison. The circumstances of the alleged lawbreaking within News Corp. suggests more than a passing resemblance to Richard Nixon presiding over a criminal conspiracy in which he insulated himself from specific knowledge of numerous individual criminal acts while being himself responsible for and authorizing general policies that routinely resulted in lawbreaking and unconstitutional conduct. Not to mention his role in the cover-up. It will remain for British authorities and, presumably, disgusted and/or legally squeezed News Corp. executives and editors to reveal exactly where the rot came from at News of the World, and whether Rupert Murdoch enabled, approved, or opposed the obvious corruption that infected his underlings.

Strong reasons Murdoch should be shunned from decent society

Published on 10 July 2011 in General. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , .

One:

Throughout his years in power, Blair had regular secret meetings with Murdoch, many abroad, and was in regular telephone contact. Price has gone as far as to claim that Murdoch “seemed like the 24th member of the cabinet”.

Blair insisted no record was ever kept of the meetings or calls, so they were totally deniable. Cherie Blair has said that her husband’s decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003 was a “close call”. So it was – and there is evidence that the final decision was taken only after Murdoch’s encouragement was received and his blessing given. Blair talked to the media tycoon three times on the telephone in the 10 days before the US-led invasion. Details obtained under freedom of information show Blair called Murdoch on 11 March, 13 March and 19 March 2003. British and US troops began the invasion on 20 March, with the Times and Sun voicing total support.

Two:

To begin with, [David] Cameron was wary of Murdoch. His first meetings with the tycoon went badly. After one meeting, a senior News International figure complained to me: “We told David exactly what to say and how to say it in order to please Rupert. But Cameron wouldn’t play ball. I can’t understand it.”

Cameron had made the deliberate decision to gain power without Murdoch’s assistance. Urged on by his senior aide – and probably his closest political friend, Steve Hilton – the future prime minister kept his distance.

But this strategy led to disaster in the polls. David Cameron was mocked and ridiculed in the Labour supporting Murdoch press, and by the summer of 2007 matters reached a crisis. There was talk that Gordon Brown, newly elected as Labour leader and Prime Minister, would call a snap election that autumn which he was widely expected to win handsomely.

It was at this point that George Osborne, then shadow chancellor and also Cameron’s closest strategic advisor, entered the fray. The immensely ambitious Osborne – who was already cultivating his own links with News International – made the case that Cameron should hire Andy Coulson.

Coulson was a brilliant News of the World executive, hand picked by Murdoch himself to go to the very top of the News International organisation. But his career had met with a setback a few months previously when he had been forced to resign as editor after the royal reporter Clive Goodman was sentenced to jail for hacking into the mobile phones of members of the royal household.

Cameron accepted Osborne’s view that there was no need to worry about this blot on Coulson’s record. This turned out to be a fatal miscalculation. Disastrously, Cameron imported Coulson into his inner team of advisors. In the short term, Coulson proved to be an excellent decision. He gave sound strategic advice, which helped Cameron see off the threat from Brown and enjoy a remarkable recovery in the opinion polls. But Coulson also performed one other function. He helped draw Cameron deep into the inner circle that surrounds Rupert Murdoch. In particular Cameron allowed himself to become a member of what is now known as the Chipping Norton set, a group of louche and affluent Londoners who centred around Rebekah Brooks’s Oxfordshire home, barely a mile from Cameron’s constituency residence.

Soon News International, through Coulson, had a key say in Conservative Party decision-making and even personnel appointments. It was News International, once again acting through Coulson, which effectively ordered Cameron to sack Dominic Grieve as his shadow home secretary in the autumn of 2008. Grieve was duly reshuffled in January 2009, after less than a year in the job. The irony of that decision is bitter today, for the decision given by News International for wanting Grieve out was that he was too soft on crime. Finally Cameron’s friendship with News International delivered the ultimate prize – the support of the Sun in the 2010 general election.

US (nearly) declares death of terrorism but will only expand wars

Published on 10 July 2011 in General. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

So let me get this right. The US spends billions annually to fight countless wars, defend the homeland, launch drone attacks against “enemies” in at least six countries and the threat is only this?

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta declared Saturday that the United States is “within reach” of “strategically defeating” Al Qaeda as a terrorist threat, but that doing so would require killing or capturing the group’s 10 to 20 remaining leaders.

Heading to Afghanistan for the first time since taking office earlier this month, Panetta said that intelligence uncovered in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May showed that 10 years of U.S. operations against Al Qaeda had left it with fewer than two dozen key operatives, most of whom are in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and North Africa.

Handy advice to News Limited

Published on 9 July 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Rupert cares about family and power; ideology always comes second

Published on 9 July 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Andreas Whittam Smith in the Independent reminds us what the Murdoch empire is really about:

At its heart, News Corporation, for all its immense global interests, is a family company.

The Murdochs may not control all the voting rights in the group, but they run it as if they did. It is not a place where shareholders come first. Nor do employees (see the plight of the News of the World staff), nor old servants (see Andy Coulson thrown to the wolves). First, second, third, and last come Rupert Murdoch and his children. Not Rupert’s wives, as it happens, because they can be let go – as they have been. Rebekah Brooks isn’t a family member and that is why she should remain apprehensive.

For everything and anything will be sacrificed to maintain the family’s position. It is not so much the Murdochs’ financial interests that weigh heaviest in the balance, though they are important, but their power. Essentially they say to the world: this is ours and we are not going to let it go.

Rupert and his son James are bullies with the characteristic that often accompanies a ruthless manner – there is something cowardly about them. They won’t face their staff in meetings when they have bad news to deliver. Rupert Murdoch wouldn’t say a word when confronted by TV reporters in the US on Thursday evening. Rebekah Brooks, who apes the Murdoch manner, hurried away from the News of the World newsroom after announcing the closure of the newspaper on Thursday, only addressing shocked staff yesterday. This former editor doesn’t appear on television in case she stumbles over her words.

British Labour MP Chris Bryant takes on Murdoch and shows politicians how to lead

Published on 9 July 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger on Murdoch’s week of shame (and it ain’t over)

Published on 9 July 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Investigate the Murdoch empire in Australia

Published on 9 July 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

An eminently reasonable call. This should be extended to the influence and power of all corporate media interests. How are benefits achieved? Who is meeting whom? When and how? A real democracy doesn’t allow one family to own so many media titles:

The leader of Australia’s Green party has called on the government to investigate Rupert Murdoch’s extensive media holdings in Australia.

Party leader Bob Brown, a senator, urged the inquiry following fresh revelations in the UK over the News of the World phone-hacking scandal.

The Murdoch-owned paper is accused of hacking into the phones of crime victims, celebrities and politicians.

Mr Brown said the potential for similar activity in Australia should be probed.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard relies on the Greens to keep her minority Labor government in power.

Speaking in the Senate on Thursday, Bob Brown called on Communications Minister Stephen Conroy ”to investigate the direct or indirect ramifications to Australia of the criminal matters affecting the United Kingdom operations of News International”.

News International runs Mr Murdoch’s UK newspapers, including the News of the World, The Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times.

On Thursday, News International shut down the News of the World following a spate of fresh revelations.

Speaking later to Reuters news agency, Mr Brown said: “We have the most Murdoch media ownership of any country in the world with eight of the 12 metropolitan dailies owned by the Murdoch empire.

“I think that it’s just prudent to take a raincheck at this stage, because the events unfolding in London are so serious, and it would be irresponsible for us not to look at the potential for similar operations to have occurred in Australia,” he said.

Tabloid hack claims phone-hacking is good for democracy

Published on 9 July 2011 in General. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

My Al Jazeera English interview on Murdoch’s excessive global power

Published on 9 July 2011 in General, Interviews and Video. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , .

As Rupert Murdoch’s empire faces unprecedented pressure in Britain over phone-hacking, criminality, ethical breaches and romancing of the political and media elites, it’s time to assess how one man and one family has amassed so much power in countless Western democracies. It should be challenged.

Here’s my interview on Al Jazeera English yesterday:

Murdoch only powerful because our elites allowed themselves to be seduced

Published on 9 July 2011 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Handy reminder from the New York Times on the kind of political and media culture that exists in Britain (and Australia, too) that allows a war mongering media mogul to exercise so much power:

When David Cameron became prime minister in May 2010, one of his first visitors at 10 Downing Street — within 24 hours, and entering by a back door, according to accounts in British newspapers — was Rupert Murdoch.

Fourteen months later, with Mr. Murdoch’s media empire in Britain reeling, Mr. Cameron may feel that his close relationship with Mr. Murdoch, which included a range of social contacts with members of the Murdoch family and the tycoon’s senior executives, has been a costly overreach.

Those concerns were intensified by the arrest on Friday of Andy Coulson, the former editor of The News of the World and, until he resigned in January this year, Mr. Cameron’s media chief at Downing Street.

…

For now, though, Mr. Murdoch and the executives of News International, the Murdoch subsidiary that controls his newspaper and television holdings in Britain, may be less concerned about the impact that the scandal may have on their political influence than on the more immediate legal challenges they face.

The company’s decision to close The News of the World will not end the scrutiny of the newspaper’s practices by the police, courts and Parliament and by a public panel of inquiry that Mr. Cameron has promised to appoint. Together, these investigations seem likely to make for an inquisition that could run for years, causing further erosion in the credibility of the Murdoch brand and costing News International millions of dollars in potential legal settlements.

…

But for all the questions about how Mr. Cameron will weather the scandal, Mr. Murdoch has been much the larger target. Simon Hoggart, a columnist for The Guardian, described the relief among British politicians at seeing the Murdoch empire brought low.

For years, members of Parliament “have been terrified of the Murdoch press — terrified they might lose support, terrified, in some cases, that their private lives might be exposed,” he wrote. “But that has gone. News International has crossed a line and M.P.’s feel, like political prisoners after a tyrant has been condemned to death by a people’s tribunal, that they are at last free.”