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Today's
Stories
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
December 19, 2003
Elaine Cassel
Courts
Rebuke Bush for Trampling the Constitution
Robert Fisk
Raid
on Fantasyville: Shooting Samarra's Schoolboys in the Back
Zoltan Grossman
The
Occupation Has Failed to "Capture" the Loyalty of Iraqis
Mike Whitney
Bush's
Afghan Highway to Nowhere
Harold Gould
Has the Radical Arab Strategy Really Worked?
Gary Leupp
The
Neocon's Dream Memo
December 18, 2003
Ann Harrison
A
Landmark Victory for Medical Pot
John L. Hess
Catfish
Blues: The SOB's from Out of Town
Karyn Strickler
Ebola
is Good for You!
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Duryodhana
Dies
Harry Browne
Hail
Jim Hickey, the "Irish Hero" of the Colonial Occupation
of Iraq
Hammond Guthrie
Captured in Abasement
December 17, 2003
Robert Fisk
Saddam's
Cold Comforts
Gideon Levy
"Don't
Even Think About the Children"
Marjorie Cohn
The Fortuitous
Arrest of Saddam: a Pyrrhic Victory?
Andrew Cockburn
Saddam's
Last Act
December 16, 2003
Robert Fisk
Getting
Saddam...15 Years Too Late
Mahajan / Jensen
Saddam
in Irons: The Hard Truths Remain
John Halle
Matt
Gonzalez and Me
Josh Frank
The
Democrats and Saddam
Tariq Ali
Saddam
on Parade: the New Model of Imperialism
December 15, 2003
Robert Fisk
The Capture
of Saddam Won't Stop the Guerrilla War
Dave Lindorff
The
Saddam Dilemma
Abu Spinoza
Blowback on the Stand: The Trial of Saddam Hussein
Norman Solomon
For
Telling the Truth: the Strange Case of Katharine Gun
Patrick Cockburn
The
Capture of Saddam
Stew Albert
Joy to the World
December 13 / 14, 2003
Bill and Kathleen Christison
Chickenhearts
at Notre Dame: the Pervasive Fear of Talking About the Israeli
Connection
Stan Goff
Jessica Lynch, Plural
Tariq Ali
The Same Old Racket in Iraq
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Map is not the Territory
Marty Bender / Stan Cox
Dr. Atkins vs. the Planet
Christopher Brauchli
Mercury Rising: the EPA's Presents to Industry
Gary Leupp
On Marriage in "Recorded History", an Open Letter to
Gov. Mitt Romney
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The Saga of Iran's Alleged WMD
Larry Everest
Saddam, Oil and Empire: Supply v. Demand
William S. Lind
How to Fight a 4th Generation War
Fran Shor
From Vietnam to Iraq: Counterinsurgency and Insurgency
Ron Jacobs
Child Abuse as Public Policy
Omar Barghouti
Relative Humanity and a Just Peace in the Middle East
Adam Engel
Pretty Damn Evil: an Interview with Ed Herman
Kristin Van Tassel
Breastfeeding Compromised
Ben Tripp
On Getting Stabbed
Susan Davis
"The Secret Lives of Dentists", a Review
Dave Zirin
Does Dylan Still Matter? an Interview with Mike Marqusee
Norman Madarasz
Searching for the Barbarians
Poets' Basement
Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Dean on Race
December 12, 2003
Josh Frank
Halliburton,
Timber and Dean
Chris Floyd
The
Inhuman Stain
Dave Lindorff
Infanticide
as Liberation: Hiding the Dead Babies
Benjamin Dangl
Another Two Worlds Are Possible?
Jean-Paul Barrois
Two States or One? an Interview with Sami Al-Deeb on the Geneva
Accords
David Vest
Bush
Drops the Mask: They Died for Halliburton
December 11, 2003
Siegfried Sassoon
A
Soldier's Declaration Against War
Douglas Valentine
Preemptive
Manhunting: the CIA's New Assassination Program
John Chuckman
The Parable of Samarra
Peter Phillips
US Hypocrisy on War Crimes: Corp Media Goes Along for the Ride
James M. Carter
The
Merchants of Blood: War Profiteering from Vietnam to Iraq
December 10, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
The
War According to Newt Gingrich
Pat Youngblood / Robert
Jensen
Workers
Rights are Human Rights
Jeff Guntzel
On Killing Children
CounterPunch Wire
Ashcroft Threatens to Subpoena Journalist's Notes in Stewart
Case
Dave Lindorff
Gore's
Judas Kiss
December 9, 2003
Michael Donnelly
A
Gentle Warrior Passes: Craig Beneville's Quiet Thunder
Chris White
A Glitch
in the Matrix: Where is East Timor Today?
Abu Spinoza
The Occupation Concertina: Pentagon Punishes Iraqis Israeli Style
Laura Carlsen
The FTAA: a Broken Consensus
Richard Trainor
Process and Profits: the California Bullet Train, Then and Now
Josh Frank
Politicians as Usual: Gore Dean and the Greens
Ron Jacobs
Remembering
John Lennon
December 8, 2003
Newton Garver
Bolivia
at a Crossroads
John Borowski
The
Fall of a Forest Defender: the Exemplary Life of Craig Beneville
William Blum
Anti-Empire
Report: Revised Inspirations for War
Tess Harper
When Christians Kill
Thom Rutledge
My Next Step
Carol Wolman, MD
Nuclear
Terror and Psychic Numbing
Michael Neumann
Ignatieff:
Apostle of He-manitariansim
Website of the Day
Bust Bob Novak
December 6 / 7, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
The
UN: Should Be Late; Never Was Great
CounterPunch Special
Toronto Globe and Mail Kills Review of "The Politics of
Anti-Semitism"
Vicente Navarro
Salvador Dali, Fascist
Saul Landau
"Reality
Media": Michael Jackson, Bush and Iraq
Ben Tripp
How Bush Can Still Win
Gary Leupp
On Purchasing Syrian Beer
Ron Jacobs
Are We Doing Body Counts, Now?
Larry Everest
Oil, Power and Empire
Lee Sustar
Defying the Police State in Miami
Jacob Levich
When NGOs Attack: Implications for the Coup in Georgia
Toni Solo
Game Playing by Free Trade Rules: the Results from Indonesia
and Dominican Republic
Mark Scaramella
How to Fix the World Bank
Bruce Anderson
The San Francisco Mayor's Race
Brian Cloughley
Shredding the Owner's Manual: the Hollow Charter of the UN
Adam Engel
A Conversation with Tim Wise
Neve Gordon
Fuad and Ezra: an Update on Gays Under the Occupation
Kurt Nimmo
Bush Gives "Freedom" Medal to Robert Bartley
Tom Stephens
Justice Takes a Holiday
Susan Davis
Avast, Me Hearties! a Review of Disney's "Pirates of the
Caribbean"
Jeffrey St. Clair
A
Natural Eye: the Photography of Brett Weston
Mickey Z.
Press Box Red
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Orloski, Albert
T-shirt of the Weekend
Got Santorum?
December 5, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
Bremer
of the Tigris
Jeremy Brecher
Amistad
Revisited at Guantanamo?
Norman Solomon
Dean
and the Corp Media Machine
Norman Madarasz
France
Starts Facing Up to Anti-Muslim Discrimination
Pablo Mukherjee
Afghanistan:
the Road Back
December 4, 2003
M. Junaid Alam
Image
and Reality: an Interview with Norman Finkelstein
Adam Engel
Republican
Chris Floyd
Naked Gun: Sex, Blood and the FBI
Adam Federman
The US Footprint in Central Asia
Gary Leupp
The
Fall of Shevardnadze
Guthrie / Albert
RIP Clark Kerr
December 3, 2003
Stan Goff
Feeling
More Secure Yet?: Bush, Security, Energy & Money
Joanne Mariner
Profit Margins and Mortality Rates
George Bisharat
Who Caused the Palestinian Diaspora?
Mickey Z.
Tear Down That Wal-Mart
John Stanton
Bush Post-2004: a Nightmare Scenario
Harry Browne
Shannon
Warport: "No More Business as Usual"
December 2, 2003
Matt Vidal
Denial
and Deception: Before and Beyond Iraqi Freedom
Benjamin Dangl
An Interview with Evo Morales on the Colonization of the Americas
Sam Bahour
Can It Ever Really End?
Norman Solomon
That
Pew Poll on "Trade" Doesn't Pass the Sniff Test
Josh Frank
Trade
War Fears
Andrew Cockburn
Tired,
Terrified, Trigger-Happy
December 1, 2003
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Unholy
Alliances: Zionism, US Imperialism and Islamic Fundamentalism
Dave Lindorff
Bush's
Baghdad Pitstop: Memories of LBJ in Vietnam
Harry Browne
Democracy Delayed in Northern Ireland
Wayne Madsen
Wagging the Media
Herman Benson
The New Unity Partnership for Labor: Bureaucratizing to Organize?
Gilad Atzmon
About
"World Peace"
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy and Intelligence: Monstrous Messes
November 29 / 30, 2003
Peter Linebaugh
On
the Anniversary of the Death of Wolfe Tone
Gary Leupp
Politicizing War on Fox News: a Tale of Two Memos
Saul Landau
Lying and Cheating:
Bush's New Political Math
Michael Adler
Inside a Miami Jail: One Activist's Narrative
Anthony Arnove
"They Put the Lie to Their Own Propaganda": an Interview
with John Pilger
Greg Weiher
Why Bush Needs Osama and Saddam
Stephen Banko, III
A Soldier's Dream
Forrest Hylton
Empire and Revolution in Bolivia
Toni Solo
The "Free Trade" History Eraser
Ben Terrall
Don't Think Twice: Bush Does Bali
Standard Schaefer
Unions
are the Answer to Supermarkets Woes
Richard Trainor
The Political Economy of Earthquakes: a Journey Across the Bay
Bridge
Mark Gaffney
US Congress Does Israel's Bidding, Again
Adam Engel
The System Really Works
Dave Lindorff
They, the Jury: How the System Rigs the Jury Pool
Susan Davis
Framing the Friedmans
Neve Gordon
Arundhati Roy's Complaint for Peace
Mitchel Cohen
Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
Ben Tripp
Capture Me, Daddy
Poets' Basement
Kearney, Albert, Guthrie and Smith
November 28, 2003
William S. Lind
Worse Than Crimes
David Vest
Turkey
Potemkin
Robert Jensen / Sam Husseini
New Bush Tape Raises Fears of Attacks
Wayne Madsen
Wag
the Turkey
Harold Gould
Suicide as WMD? Emile Durkheim Revisited
Gabriel Kolko
Vietnam
and Iraq: Has the US Learned Anything?
South Asia Tribune
The Story
of the Most Important Pakistan Army General in His Own Words
Website of the Day
Bush Draft
November 27, 2003
Mitchel Cohen
Why
I Hate Thanksgiving
Jack Wilson
An
Account of One Soldier's War
Stefan Wray
In the Shadows of the School of the Americas
Al Krebs
Food as Corporate WMD
Jim Scharplaz
Going Up Against Big Food: Weeding Out the Small Farmer
Neve Gordon
Gays
Under Occupation: Help Save the Life of Fuad Moussa
November 26, 2003
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: the Case of a Rape Foretold
Bruce Jackson
Media
and War: Bringing It All Back Home
Stew Albert
Perle's
Confession: That's Entertainment
Alexander Cockburn
Miami and London: Cops in Two Cities
David Orr
Miami Heat
Tom Crumpacker
Anarchists
on the Beach
Mokhiber / Weissman
Militarization in Miami
Derek Seidman
Naming the System: an Interview with Michael Yates
Kathy Kelly
Hogtied
and Abused at Ft. Benning
Website of the Day
Iraq Procurement
November 25, 2003
Linda S. Heard
We,
the Besieged: Western Powers Redefine Democracy
Diane Christian
Hocus
Pocus in the White House: Of Warriors and Liberators
Mark Engler
Miami's
Trade Troubles
David Lindorff
Ashcroft's
Cointelpro
Website of the Day
Young McCarthyites of Texas
November 24, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
The
Miami Model
Elaine Cassel
Gulag
Americana: You Can't Come Home Again
Ron Jacobs
Iraq
Now: Oh Good, Then the War's Over?
Alexander Cockburn
Rupert Murdoch: Global Tyrant
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Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
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Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
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Corrie
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Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
Weekend
Edition
December 27 / 28, 2003
"I Am Thy Father's
Ghost"
A
Journey into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
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
sopn Michael, rewarded Murdoch's tub-thumping forf 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.
Weekend
Edition Features for Dec. 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
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