I'm afraid that after the Extremist Tory massacre by Anders Behring Breivik, there will be a wave of rampant Toryphobia across Europe. After all, when a terrorist is muslim, all muslims are terrorists, and the result is Islamophobia. So why shouldn't it be any different with the Crucifixionists?
Anders Breivik highlights the bankruptcy of what is laughably called 'Right-Wing Philosophy', which is at best a mere apology for the status quo, and at worst a crazed homicidal stampede to a mythical Golden Age. And at its most moronic, makes British prime ministers, and the reactionary media, align themselves with fascists. The fact is that Oslo was another example of how a crazy, paranoid culture drives people crazy, just as it did to Osama Bin Laden and Raol Moat. An illustration of the extent and banality of mental illness. If Tories want to dignify Breivik's disease as a political ideology, fine. But doing so will drag them down to his level. And if they accept that this as pathological rather than political, then so are the actions of Al Qaida. Anyone who did what Breivik did is crazy, nothing else. Mentally ill. All murderers are and should be committed to an asylum for life - which would also be an honest way around Norway's 21 year maximum sentence. But if he is insane, then all terrorists are insane, and also all mass murderers. Either all terrorists are sick or none are. The real question is why are so many people that sick? But it doesn't suit the purposes of our politicians, priests and millionaires to acknowledge the true extent of the damage done by the society they champion and benefit most from. The truth is that our Ratrace depends on a healthy amount of mental illness. And that most of us are only one or two traumas, humiliations or failures away from violence or worse. Casualties like Raol Moat are only the tiny tip of the iceberg.
Our concept of mental illness is radically unsound, and in denial about our universal level of socialised, institutional neurosis. Every humiliating eradication of our individuality and every step into alienation from our fellow human beings drives us nearer to declaring war on the world, and destroying it in the only way we can. By going insane.
How humiliating.
How humiliating.
You know who I used to be?
Rupert Murdoch King Of Wapping!
Dozens of papers running at once.
TV stations, satellite deals with the Chinese, movie stars, presidents.
Unions and troublemakers cowering at my every editorial.
Lunch at Chequers. The police in my pocket.
Paywalls!
Look at me now.
Look at me now!
I'm hiding from a committee of British MP's.
I used to have thousands of investors begging - pleading to put their money into a Rupert Murdoch company.
Look at my investors now. Sharpening their knives...
They lie in wait like wolves. The smell of blood in their nostrils. Waiting. Interminably waiting.
- You have exactly ten seconds to turn that look of disgusting pity into one of enormous respect.
One.
Two...
Shred the mails.
Shred the mails.
(Bastille Day)
The Don wouldn't face The Committee. So the committee has issued summonses for the whole crew. Murdoch and Junior, plus Brooks. Sweet. Why so coy if they've got so little to hide?
The entire character of the stinking Murdoch/Thatcher Era is summed up by his cowardice today at the prospect of facing the Culture Committee. The cowardice of the bully who is past his power. Just as the Murdoch/Thatcher era was the time when the power of the media he owned was at its peak. And his monopolisation of it allowed him to brutalise the culture in the name of his and Thatcher's free-market primitivism.
Give the power of information away free, as the internet does, and corporate monopoly and power crumbles.
The bid for BSkyB was withdrawn an hour ago, and while there isn't quite dancing in the streets, there certainly is on the internet. Murdoch has as many defenders as Moamar Ghadaffi.
The announcement came after the formal statement to Parliament by Cameron, and a PM's questions which must have convinced NewsCorp lawyers that to go ahead would have been ridiculous, especially considering the Commons unanimous vote of no-confidence in Murdoch tonight. And naturally, the ordeal of answering questions to next Tuesday's select committee can now be avoided.
What might not be so easy to duck are the possible charges under US law related to allegations that the families of 9/11 victims were hacked. Or the continuing market dive in in NewsCorp shares. And if, as everyone believes Murdoch is not a fit and proper person to own all of BSkyB, then he is not a fit and proper person to own any of it. But exactly how far NewsCorp falls depends on how much effort ordinary people put into pressurising companies not to advertise with any of their outlets, as they did last week when sinking the News of the World.
And if NewsCorp is vulnerable to public outrage, which corporations are safe? Murdoch is being run out of town on a rail. This is what happens when you give people to much power over information in an age when information is power.
Murdochosaurus Rex is just another dinosaur destroyed by a change in the technological climate, and a meteor called Milly, in his case. In Tunisia, the meteor was called Mohamed Bouaziz, but the climate was just as inhospitable to tyrants. Anyone who thinks nothing has changed is beyond hope. A dinosaur. You simply cannot go about giving vast numbers of people control over information without giving them power. And in an age when information is power, that is lethal, especially to those whose business is the monopolisation of information (and therefore power). Murdoch was destroyed by the shift from the capital intensive push-media world to the mad internet world which gives us all a voice. And it is instructivbe that the branch of the media which resisted all attempts to smother the truth were the least profitable, like the Guardian, or the one which has no shareholders to answer to at all, namely the BBC. Thank god for the BBC. If Murdoch had not been exposed, future of the the BBC was very shaky. It was the main target in his sights after the BSky B acquisition.
The deflation of the Murdoch Empire is simply another sign that the power balance has tipped away from the capital-intensive print era's global dinosaurs and despots to the digital us. Enough sheer information became available this year to enough people, and fast enough, for them to use and share it effectively. And that has translated into mass actions from Athens last year via The Arab Revolution to The House of Commons tomorrow, where the entire political class will try to distance itself from a corpse in order to rescue its electoral credibility with a disgusted public. And since the disgust in question was directed at the marketing department for Consumerism, it is naiive to think that a few resignations and retirements at the top of NewsCorp will satisfy the growing appetite for an ethical world, or for real mass political power - neither of which are very compatible with the free-market consumerism beloved and represented by Rupert Murdoch's glad methods.
Given that shifts in technology always result in shifts in power, the shock events of this year were inevitable. The ability of the masses to form a rapid consensus on any issue and 'toxify' any offender is a form of democracy in its infancy, but one which is doing a better job of keeping a check on a global media corporation than any government or police force in the last 30 years - which now seem like a nightmare.
Murdoch & Co are still dithering about whether to face up to the Culture and Sport Committee next week, after initial reports they would attend, making the TV event of the decade. If he does go, he will either come across as a batty old man led up the garden path by his idiot son and the rest, and the shares will plummet. Or he will come across as the bully everyone now suspects, and the shares will plummet. Unless he has a magic rabbit up his sleeve that clears him of blame, in which case, why wait so long?
Whatever the News of the World might have been once, for as long as I can remember it has exploited every 'victim' it pretended to champion. From abused children to abused inmates of corrupt care-homes, it has taken its readers for a ride with every hypocritical expose. If it really had cared about The Truth, it would have investigated itself as soon as any allegations came to light. But it didn't. It ignored its own crimes in pursuit of the far more profitable sex and drugs stories. It stands condemned by its lack of action, and by its depraved agenda. It will not be the great loss some are claiming.
Rupert Murdoch is on his way to London to save his business. Will he be apologising to any of his victims face to face? Will there be a press-conference? Will the Sun be at the press conference?
The Wapping-gate scandal has reached America, and shares in News International are falling again, in spite of the sacrificial offering of News Of The World. Renault has announced a review of advertising by all News International outlets, and there seems to be a new campaign every hour to prevent the takeover of BSkyB. The abuse of Milly Dowler is universally despicable, not just to Britons. And Murdoch's lofty indifference in Palm Springs is making things much worse. Americans think he should be trying to save his empire by meeting with the offended families, and apologising to them face to face, rather than sacking hundreds of innocent workers at a stroke. In Britain, that thought hasn't crossed anyone's mind. We know him too well. And now we also know his appalling son, and his toxic protege Rebekah Brooks and their sidekick Andy Coulson. And arch-reptile Glen Mulcare. And what a crew they are. And the more people are exposed to them, the more likely they are to vomit at the sight of any NewsCorp production. How far the disgust will spread across the Junk-sheet market is hard to say. And the mysoginy, bigotry, racism, and lynch-mob mentality won't end even if News Corp disappeared overnight. But the assumption of innocence has gone. And as Liverpool proved, people do have long memories. It is no longer possible to claim that 'lively' tabloid journalism is 'just a bit of fun', when the cost is a corporate Big Brother scrutinising the private lives of anyone it pleases. That proposition has offended a core part of the British identity, ironically enough for a brand parading in the Union Jack whenever profitable. And so the junk press will always now be under suspicion.
The culture is changing mainlybecause of the shift from print to the internet. The surge of pressure on companies not to advertise in the News of the World came via social network outrage, and so it had to close. And after this experience, there will be pressure on newspapersin future to convince readers that their stories are from ethical sources. In effect, the public will adopt an editorial role. Rupert Murdoch will think what we tell him to think... This is another example of the internet at work, creating the sense of significance which makes things happen. By giving people a voice, and subjecting their opinions to instant peer-review, the internet is creating a far more sophisticated population than ever. One in which there are far too many lawyers for comfort. If you're a crook. The other amazing effect is that politicians are suddenly not afraid of News Corp anymore. Which is another echo of Tahrir Square worth wallowing in for a while, and something we haven't seen in 30 years, and which could radically change the political atmosphere. Especially when it is remembered that the disaster of NuLabour was a direct response to the political power of the Murdoch empire. If only that embryonic political courage can be translated into genuine moral purpose, and the rest of the consumerist toxins purged from the culture, the memory of Milly Dowler might be honoured appropriately. After all, it was the same paranoid, sadistic tabloid agenda which perverted the minds of creatures like Levi Bellfield in the first place, and which drives thousands of other teenage girls into depression and worse. The fact that people everywhere should take such instant and furious offence on her behalf is a blazing testimony to something real and deep and shared. There is that to be grateful to Rupert Murdoch for, indirectly, even though it contradicts everything he represents.
Murdoch rose by peddling a debased version of humanity, and by debasing humanity as much as possible to increase the market. But producing this muck week after week so desensitised his operatives that they saw nothing wrong with tapping the phone of a murdered child. Murdoch's influence is broken by his own product. At last the shit comes home to roost, which must surely be a lesson to all other kinds of consumerist pornographers and drug dealers. It seems like most of accepted, received 'history' is also going to have to be re-evaluated. If the myth of Murdoch is punctured, as now seems the case, so are the myths he created, like 'The Loony Left', 'Political Correctness', 'Chavs', 'Scroungers' and the entire cast-list of grotesque scapegoats in his fantasy world. This is another tipping point in a very important year.
Bye Bye News of the World, or rather, welcome the Sundayest Sunny Sun of All Time! The Sunday Sun.
Scuppering the News of the World is a desperate bit of fire-breaking between brands, at the expense of hundreds of jobs. But it is a transparent tactic which is not working. People are not thinking what Murdoch tells them to think. And the level of disgust might well mean pickets and demonstrations outside newsagents on the first sunday of The SunSun.
The revelations are hourly and disgusting, and show every sign of increasing as time goes by. And the classic excuses are being reeled out by the regime (sorry , management) 'rogue elements' 'rotten apples' 'thorough internal investigation' 'genuine reforms'. All the vocabulary of the besieged despotism.
The NOW workers are understandably revolting. And if they were to decide to occupy Murdoch Towers, and run on that story alone, they'd keep their jobs for a week or two, at least. One thing is certain, this sunday's edition will be a curiosity. And well worth buying. The takeover of BSky B is thankfully looking less likely after an avalanche of petitions. Most people seem to agree that it would be like Britain surrendering to Germany in 1945. What David Cameron has to ask himself is: Who runs the country? The media or the bankers?
The Cancer of Rupert Murdoch 'There is no one person more responsible for the pollution of the British press.." If we had a constitution, Murdoch would be the greatest threat to it. Or as Orwell might have put it: If you want a vision of the future, imagine News Corp snooping on the family of a murdered teenager, for money. Dirty Digger Is Watching You! The question rightly being asked is: what on earth is wrong with our society when we have politicians and police queuing up to grovel to a disgusting peddler of hypocrisy and sleaze like Murdoch? The answer is simple. Don Murdoch made the politicians an offer they couldn't refuse: 15% in the polls for the universal right to sell junk in their neighbourhoods, and 100% of the biggest broadcaster in the country, and the eventual destruction of the BBC. A genuine partnership with a government which knows how to encourage business.
The story is not about the petty corruption of journalists, no more than Lehmann Brothers was the story of individual greed.It's not personal, it's strictly business. It is bigger than the crimes of a few weak and frightened public school bedwetters. Flogging them in front of the common room fire wouldn't change anything. Hanging them from London Bridge would not be a deterrent in the face of the massive rewards for being Don Murdoch's friend. It's not about the scumbags, it's about the money.. Again. Like Lehmann Brothers. So watch out for those building bonfires and sharpening stakes, they will be trying to divert attention from the real problem of the political and commercial power of a brand new technology, and its ability to pervert truth itself, in the wrong hands. And the hands at the moment could not be wronger.
But even last night we had the usual morons proclaiming that 'We Get The Press We Deserve'. It's our fault. We're to blame. So we mustn't ever do anything about Murdoch's plan to own all the information in the world but first we must Heal Ourselves. All of us. This simple solution has the benefit of obstructing any progress almost indefinitely. Perfect.
And then there are the Storm in A Teacup Brigade. Belittling the entire war as political correctness gone made and counter-attacking with accusations 'piousness' and (much worse) unprofitability, against the responsible journalists who saw through News International decades ago. Wapping Gate is just sour grapes - if they knew how to run a paper like the News of the World which made a profit they wouldn't bitch. And as Richard Littlejohn would say: the trouble with the parents of murdered teenagers and dead soldiers is that they've got absolutely no sense of humour. All this fuss about a bit of eavesdropping, which we've all done down the supermarket - admit it. It's Political Correctness Gone Mad!
Then there is the theory that newspapers merely follow and even 'champion' popular needs. The masses have to have junk. The fact is that the tabloids don't 'champion' anything except feral individualism, which they do on a military scale. The more debased the culture becomes as a result, the more junk people need to comfort themselves from it, and those who profit from junk become more powerful. And the culture of pathological binge consumption is reinforced. In the competitiveness of their business, there is no room for morality. The morals are dictated by the money.
Now we know why the News of the World can sell cheaper than the rest and has the biggest single-day English language circulation in the world, and we know the real cost to real people, and to the newspaper market, at the expense of anything approaching quality journalism. Sleaze journalism is illegally subsidised by its victims, bereaved families especially, but ultimately by the entire culture. As Denis Potter predicted. Murdoch is a cancer. But now it looks as if surgery might be an option after all. A challenge to the Murdoch empire as serious as the Arab Spring has emerged overnight, triggered by the Milly Dowler outrage. There is a definite lack of fear, even from MP's, who almost threw themselves into today's emergency debate. The Media Spring is finally beginning to occupying the square. 2011. What a year!
News is that champagne corks are popping at the Mirror Group, but I'd like to think they're starting to think about dancing on tables at Fortress Wapping, too. And beyond, because surely, if bugging is despicable when newspapers do it, it is despicable when any business does it. And they do. The techniques used to exploit the family of Milly Dowler were perfected in the credit-search industry. Which is just as vibrant now as ever.
The media are the most visible culprits, by nature. But the culture of the NOW newsroom extends across Boardroom land. Why shouldn't it? Or are we merely dismissing Rupert Murdoch as just a Rotten-Apple proprietor, but in a big barrel? The culture which created Wapping-Gate is not confined to News International. How the forthcoming public enquiries choose to conceal that fact will be the most interesting revelation of all. Is this how the banking crisis will get replayed? And the depth of global corporate depravity remains concealed? By blaming Murdoch for the economic system he was was the master of? Meanwhile The Sun fearlessly continues to wield the sword of Free Speech!
The forum thread "Should recent events mean a rethink of the BSkyB takeover?" has been deleted by a moderator. The thread has been removed from your forum thread subscriptions list.
Posts related to Wapping-Gate are promptly removed. Again.
But what's The News of the World to The Sun anyway? I thought they were meant to be totally separate organisations with no links at all and therefore no guilt by association thank you! So why are they so protective of an organisation and a culture which they should, if only for legal reasons, be distancing themselves from? Very mysterious. And very shaky from a monolith like NewsCorp.
But the most mysterious thing of all is that Coulson and Brooks have blatantly admitted to breaking the law by paying the police. Why aren't they in jail?
