The overlooked Rupert Murdoch scandals
Roddy Newman | 17.11.2011 11:49
The article is about Murdoch media scandals in this country, the US, and Australia which the British media has not covered, or has barely covered.
While the British media has uncovered a number of Rupert Murdoch scandals which have thankfully led to a reduction in his influence in this country, it has not reported, or has barely reported many horrible things which his media empire does in Britain, the US, and Australia.
This article is about those overlooked Murdoch scandals.
It discusses: 1 crucial aspect of the paying police scandal, and 1 crucial aspect of the 'phone hacking scandal which most people are unaware of; 2 examples of Rupert Murdoch media in this country and Australia driving people to kill themselves; numerous proven examples of Murdoch media in this country, the US, and Australia fabricating news stories; the racism of Murdoch's Fox News network; prominent Americans who say that Fox News, which is notorious in liberal circles in the US for its fabrications, is like a fascist or Communist propaganda operation; Rupert Murdoch's political hero, Ronald Reagan, appointing 5 pro-Third Reich people to government jobs when he was elected US President in 1980; Murdoch's love affair with China's brutal Communist regime; Julian Assange's January admission that WikiLeaks has US diplomatic cables whose content should worry Murdoch and News Corporation, and that those "insurance" cables will be published if anything happens to him or WikiLeaks; Murdoch's Australian media empire illegally paying police in that country; "The Sun" employing the cruel "comedian" Frankie Boyle as a columnist; "The Sun" hacking scandal, which has not been reported very much at all, despite the fact that there is now good evidence to prove that the paper was involved in hacking, which is why Jude Law is now suing them for allegedly hacking his 'phone; campaigns which are now trying to persuade people to boycott News Corporation's products; some ideas for a humorous boycott campaign against News Corporation; and finally, the national culture reasons why France and Holland have no "News of the World" and "Sun" type newspapers, while Britain does.
Scotland Yard has announced that its Operation Elveden will look into claims that a "small number" of police officers were illegally given money by the "News of the World" between 2003 and 2007, but Paul McMullan, who was deputy features editor at the "News of the World" from 1994 to 2001, admitted during Radio 4's July 7 "World at One" programme, that in 1995, one of his colleagues at the paper paid a police officer for a tip off that the daughter of the film actor Denholm Elliott was begging outside a London tube station, and occasionally working as a prostitute, and also admitted that there was a "going rate" of between "two and five hundred pounds" for police tip offs of that sort, so the illegal payments appear to have begun long before 2003, and to have involved more cases than Denholm Elliott's daughter Jennifer, which means that the paying police scandal is bigger than most people realise.
Paul McMullan was also quoted in "The Guardian" of September 8, 2010, as having revealingly said that the "News of the World" used Glenn Mulcaire's hacking for "just about every story", which means that the hacking scandal is also bigger than most people realise.
Paul McMullan also admitted during the "World at One" programme, that his story about Jennifer Elliott, and his subsequent "News of the World" stories about her drug problems, "humiliated and destroyed her", and that he feels guilty about the fact that she later committed suicide.
Jennifer Elliott was not the first person who had been driven to kill themselves by the Rupert Murdoch media empire's cruel and sexually repressed obsession with publicising people's private lives, which the public should only be told about if they, for example, expose the hypocrisy of a sexually moralistic politician or cleric.
In 1964, one of Rupert Murdoch's Australian newspapers, the Sydney "Daily Mirror", printed an entirely fabricated story under the headline, "WE HAVE SCHOOLGIRL'S ORGY DIARY", which led to a 13 year old boy who was named in the story, Digby Bamford, being expelled from his school and hanging himself. The 14 year old schoolgirl, who was also expelled from her school, was later medically examined by a doctor for the local Child Welfare Department, and was found to be a virgin.
In 1971, the "News of the World" ran a similar entirely fabricated story about a 15 year old dancer in the "Top of the Pops" audience, Samantha MacAlpine, which claimed that a "leatherette bound book" she had written in, revealed that she and other dancers in the audience, were involved in sexual "promiscuity" with musicians who appeared on the show. She then committed suicide, and the pathologist revealed that she had also been a virgin.
Rupert Murdoch's media empire has in fact become notorious for its completely fabricated stories, which is why an American comedian turned Democrat Senator from Minnesota, Al Franken, has written a humorous book which includes entire chapters about the proven lies of 2 presenters who work for Murdoch's Fox News, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right" (Penguin, London, 2004).
Al Franken's book is very definitely worth reading, because (a) it is amusing, because (b) it is, "The book that the Murdoch-owned Fox News tried to prevent from being published", to cite "The Observer", and because (c) Fox News unsuccessfully sued Franken for using their "Fair and balanced" slogan in his book title.
Another example of Fox News's disinterest in the truth, is the fact that it has broadcast digitally altered photos of 2 "New York Times" reporters which gave them yellow teeth, and in one case, a receding hairline, and dark patches under his eyes:
http://mediamatters.org/research/200807020002?f=h_top
Yet another, is its decision to make it look like a Sarah Palin book signing had attracted a huge crowd, by reusing footage from a 2008 election John McCain / Sarah Palin campaign rally:
http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20091119/ts_ynews/ynews_ts988
Fox News used the same rebroadcast old footage to make a right wing event look bigger tactic, to inflate the size of a crowd at a Michele Bachmann led protest against Barack Obama's health care reform:
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/nov/13/nation/na-hannity-crowd13
Since then, Fox News's Sean Hannity has backed Michele Bachmann's entirely incorrect claim that African Americans were more likely to grow up in a 2 parent household under slavery, than they are under Barack Obama:
http://www.newshounds.us/2011/07/13/hannity_endorses_controversial_slavery_language_as_he_attacks_media_for_criticizing_bachmanns_marriage_pledge.php#more
Al Franken's book exposed Sean Hannity's dishonesty in the chapter "Fun with Racism", as it pointed out on page 269, that of the 15 people who were then on the advisory panel of the African American Republican Leadership Council, 13, including Hannity, were white, and 1 of the 2 who was not, former Massachusetts Senator Edward W. Brooke III, had never heard of the group, and had no idea why they were fraudulently claiming that he was their honorary chairman.
Given Sean Hannity's backing for Michele Bachmann's rosy tinted view of slavery, it is even more bizarre that he should have been on the AARLC advisory panel.
Perhaps Fox News's racism, which led to it being sued by a black employee who was subjected to racist comments by his colleagues, and then fired for complaining about them, explains why he is:
http://gawker.com/5670666/fox-news-hit-with-5-million-workplace-racism-suit
As Rupert Murdoch was a supporter of the last Republican President, George W. Bush, and as Sean Hannity is a fan of Michele Bachmann, it is disgraceful that a woman with a rosy tinted view of the American slavery era, will quite possibly, if she becomes the Republican candidate for President, be able to rely on support from Fox News, and the rest of Murdoch's American media in the 2012 election, and in the White House if she is elected.
It is certainly hardly likely that Fox News will back Barack Obama in 2012, because most of the people who could be Republican candidates for President next year, are working for Fox News as commentators, as this article points out:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/27/fox-news-has-nearly-all-p_n_740070.html
Moreover, a Fox News contributor, Liz Trotta, has joked during a broadcast about assassinating Barack Obama, who, not surprisingly, is not a big fan of Fox:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/michaelcalderone/0508/Fox_analyst_apologizes_for_Obama_assassination_joke.html
It is inconceivable that a contributor to ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, C-SPAN, or MSNBC would joke on air about assassinating an American politician, so George Soros, who grew up under Hungary's fascist and Communist regimes, before emigrating to the US in 1956, was right to compare Fox News journalism to Nazi and Communist propaganda:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/onmedia/0611/Soros_on_Murdoch_Ailes_Their_lies_shall_not_stand.html
The American documentary, "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism", which was partly based on testimony from numerous former Fox News employees, also features former CBS Evening News Anchor Walter Cronkite, who describes Fox News as "far right wing", and former Fox News contributor Larry Johnson, who talks about the almost "Stalinist system" at Fox News, which backs up what George Soros said about Fox.
You can watch "Outfoxed" here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6737097743434902428#
Larry Johnson's "Stalinist system" remark might sound far fetched to some people, but this "Daily Telegraph" article, which is not online, but which was republished by the Melbourne newspaper "The Age", quoted an unnamed former senior Fox executive as having said that the network spied on its staff by reading their emails, and made them "feel they were being watched", which led to Fox employees working in conditions which were like "Russia at the height of the Soviet era":
http://www.theage.com.au/world/black-ops-and-espionage-inside-fox-news-20110721-1hpkn.html
"Outfoxed" also quotes former Fox News employees who point out that Rupert Murdoch is a big fan of the late Ronald Reagan, and that Fox celebrated Reagan's birthday, so as Fox has been compared to Nazi and Communist propaganda, I ought to point out that Reagan, and his Vice President George H. W. Bush, appointed 5 pro-Third Reich people to government jobs.
When the Reagan-Bush team won the 1980 election, they appointed former Waffen (Armed) SS officer General Fritz Kraemer to their Star Wars advisory panel. Kraemer, who was already working for the Pentagon Plans Division, was a mentor to another Reagan-Bush appointee, Secretary of State General Alexander Haig. A second Reagan-Bush adviser, was a former officer in Hitler's Wehrmacht, General Albert Wedemeyer. A third, was the German / Irish American Pat Buchanan, the 1985-1987 White House Communications Director.
Buchanan is a notorious Hitler regime apologist who allegedly advised the Reagan-Bush Administration to ignore Jewish protests against Reagan's forthcoming 1985 official visit to a partly Waffen SS cemetery in West Germany. Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel alleged that at a meeting with Jewish leaders at the Reagan-Bush White House, "The only one really defending the trip was Pat Buchanan, saying, 'We cannot give the perception of the President being subjected to Jewish pressure.'" ("Is Buchanan Courting Bias?", "Washington Post", February 29, 1992). Buchanan denies making this alleged remark.
Another Reagan-Bush appointee, was J. Peter Grace, a chemicals magnate, who was put in charge of the US Government's Private Sector Survey on Cost Control. Among Grace's employees, was Otto Ambros, who was the inventer of Zyklon B, the poison gas which was used to kill Jews at Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, and so on.
A final Reagan-Bush appointee, was Lev Dobriansky, who was made US Ambassador to the Bahamas. He edited a journal called "Ukrainian Quarterly", whose politics can be gauged from the fact that it ran an article which praised General Pavlo Shandruk, the creator of the Waffen SS Galician Division, which worked at Auschwitz.
Shandruk also fought against the US Army at some place called Bitburg.
Finally, I ought to point out that when he was Governor of California (1967-1975), Ronald Reagan considered putting leading figures in the California counterculture in camps which sound like Nazi concentration camps, and the Soviet Gulag camps. To quote Simon Wells's "Charles Manson: Coming Down Fast" (Hodder and Stoughton, London, 2010), which is a biography of the notorious multiple murderer and cult leader Charles Manson: "As California was fast becoming the epicentre of radicalisation, Governor Ronald Reagan began to seriously consider locking up the hippie scene's chief protagonists in internment camps." (p.40)
As this "Guardian" article explains, in 2004, Fox News was forced to apologise after it attributed damaging statements to George W. Bush's opponent, John Kerry, which were complete fabrications, and which were the kind of 100% false propaganda that the Nazis and the Eastern European Communists were notorious for:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2004/oct/04/digitalmedia.uselections2004
In its July 8 issue, "Private Eye" pointed out that when Rupert Murdoch was interviewed by the House of Lords communications committee in New York on September 17, 2007, he said, "he believed that Sky News would be more popular if it were more like the Fox Channel. Then it would be 'a proper alternative to the BBC'".
He also told the committee that, to quote their minutes, "Sky News could become more like Fox without a change to the impartiality rules in the UK. For example, Sky had not yet made the presentational progress that Fox News had. He stated that the only reason that Sky News was not more like Fox News was that 'nobody at Sky listens to me.'"
Because Fox News has been involved in broadcasting fabrications, it is certainly a good thing that Sky News is not more like Fox News. If Rupert Murdoch, who of course currently owns a 39% controlling shareholding in BSkyB, had been allowed to take 100% control of it, would he have told Sky News staff to make their station like Fox News, or face the sack?
After all, in "The Guardian" of July 16, Polly Toynbee revealed that, "Already the low rumble of Murdoch commentators demanding a change to the law on political bias in broadcasting was tilling the ground for the Foxification of British television...".
The proven lies of Rupert Murdoch's British employees, are of course generally better known in Britain than Fox News's fabrications.
They include the completely fabricated stories which "The Sun" printed about: the Hillsborough disaster; Elton John supposedly having sex with underage male prostitutes; refugees supposedly eating swans; Tony Benn's supposed insanity; and Peter Tatchell supposedly going to the Gay Olympics (which was part of a "Sun" hate campaign against him during the 1983 Bermondsey bye election that led to him being physically assaulted by fascists, and other homophobes, more than 300 times in the following decades); the completely fabricated stories which "The Sunday Times" and "The Sun" printed about Carmen Proetta; the November 12, 2007 "Sun" story about Ken Livingstone which claimed that he had accused the 7/7 bombers of killing "the wrong people"; and the July 23 "Sun" front page story, "NORWAY'S 9/11", which also featured the smaller headline, "'AL-QAEDA' MASSACRE".
Three days after that Ken Livingstone story, "The Sun" was forced to print an apology on page 36 which said:
"In Monday's Sun we reported that London Mayor Ken Livingstone had accused the 7/7 bombers of killing "the wrong people"...In fact no such comment was made by Ken Livingstone and we apologise to Mr Livingstone for the error."
The "'AL-QAEDA' MASSACRE" was of course the work of far right Christian fundamentalist Freemason terrorist Anders Breivik, who claims to have co-founded the Norwegian Defence League, which is under the control of the anti-Islam English Defence League. He was also a member and local official of Norway's Progress Party, who have called for Islam to be banned in Norway, but Rupert Murdoch's newspapers never allow little things like facts to get in the way of a chance to smear Muslims, which is why his "Today" newspaper, which thankfully closed down in November 1995, ran an April 20, 1995 front page story about the Oklahoma City bombing which was headlined "IN THE NAME OF ISLAM". The real Oklahoma bombing culprit was of course Timothy McVeigh, who was inspired by a fascist novel which openly advocates the killing of all of the world's billions of non-white people, including Muslims, "The Turner Diaries" by the late William Pierce, who was a big inspiration to the BNP, as I explained in this article:
https://operationblackvote.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/questiontime-for-bnps-fascist-links/
You can see the July 23 "Sun" front page here:
http://twitpic.com/5u6n2l
You can read about the "Today" front page on page 141 of Margaret Kleffner Nydell's book, "Understanding Arabs: A Guide for Modern Times" (Intercultural Press, London, 2005).
As it has now emerged that Scotland Yard has told the relatives of 7/7 victims that the "News of the World" may have hacked their 'phones, and as the FBI are investigating the possibility that the "News of the World" tried to hack the 'phones of 9/11 victims, "The Sun"'s lies about Ken Livingstone and the Norway massacre, and "Today"'s lies about the Oklahoma City bombing, were particularly disgusting.
As "The Sun" fabricated a comment about the 7/7 bombing, it is not surprising that the Murdoch media empire has been involved in publicising other war on terror fabrications.
The Iranian nuclear bomb programme is a serious threat to the world, because of the Iranian Islamist tyranny's thoroughly vicious nature, because of its willingness to engage in terrorism, and because, like all types of religious and secular fundamentalists, it has a weak grasp on reality, but that does not mean that "The Times" should be publishing a document about the Iranian nuclear programme which US intelligence sources have branded a forgery:
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/07/02/rupert-murdoch%E2%80%99s-london-times-published-forged-iran-nuke-document-u-s-intelligence-concludes/
The just cited article quotes former CIA counterterrorism official Philip Giraldi, who revealed that Rupert Murdoch's media empire has published other similar fabrications: “The Rupert Murdoch chain has been used extensively to publish false intelligence from the Israelis and occasionally from the British government”.
Of course, Rupert Murdoch's empire does not need governments to make up war related fabrications for it to publish, as it is perfectly capable of creating its own. For example, the completely fabricated "Sun" interview with Marcia McKay, the widow of Ian McKay, who won a Victoria Cross during the Falklands War. That "interview" is mentioned on page 420 of Australian journalist John Pilger's book, "Hidden Agendas" (Random House, London, 1999).
Although "The Sun" fabricated a war on terror related statement by Ken Livingstone, who it calls Red Ken, because it does not like his democratic socialist views, Rupert Murdoch is a friend of the Chinese Communist Party, which has of course killed tens of millions of people during its 62 years in power, mainly because of the vast famine which Mao's Great Leap Forward directly led to.
As John Pilger points out on pages 530-531 of "Hidden Agendas", Rupert Murdoch has published a biography of the former Chinese dictator Deng Xiaoping which was written by Deng's daughter, has broadcast a documentary series which was based on the biography, has said of China that, "The truth is - and we Americans don't like to admit it - that authoritarian countries can work", and has helped the Chinese Communists to censor the Internet:
"In 1997, with the People's Daily, he launched his 'Chinabyte' Internet service in English. Politics will be censored; the Chinese users' view of the West will be the Murdoch view."
As Rupert Murdoch's fellow Australian Julian Assange has pointed out in this interview, China is the world's worst censor of the Internet:
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/01/china-wikileaks-assange
Julian Assange also said during that January interview, that WikiLeaks is in possession of US embassy cables whose content should worry Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation, and that those cables were "insurance" files which would be released if anything happened to him or WikiLeaks.
Red Rupe, the purveyor of Communist style 100% false propaganda, also does not seem to like democratic greens very much, because his Melbourne "Herald Sun" newspaper was censured by the Australian Press Council after it made up a number of lies about Australian Green Party policies:
http://www.presscouncil.org.au/pcsite/adj/1270.html
Those lies were not surprising, as Rupert Murdoch's Australian newspapers are climate change deniers, and as another Murdoch newspaper, "The Australian", has called in an editorial for the Australian Greens to be "destroyed at the ballot box":
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/needed-a-policy-for-julia-direction-for-labor/story-e6frg71x-1225916087426
Those dishonest lies were not surprising for another reason, the fact that the Australian arm of Rupert Murdoch's media empire, News Limited, is just as happy to dishonestly break the law by paying police as its News International British arm is, as this article explains:
http://www.meattradenewsdaily.co.uk/news/140711/australia___police_payments_by_news_limited_exposed_in_australia_.aspx
Rupert Murdoch's sewer journalism has of course led to the creation of groups which are campaigning for a boycott of the Murdoch media empire, and if those groups were to use humour, the boycott campaign might be able to attract significant media attention, and thus public support. Humour might also persuade many people who are not currently boycotting all of News Corporation's products, to find out what they are online, so they can do so, because people do not want to be associated with things which are objects of ridicule, in case their friends and family regard them as ridiculous.
As the French comic playwright Moliere once rightly said, people do not mind being called wicked, but they hate being laughed at.
That fact may explain why, as this article explains, Fox News threatened legal action against the makers of "The Simpsons" (which is broadcast by its sister channel, Fox Entertainment), after they ridiculed its Republican bias with headlines like "Do Democrats Cause Cancer?":
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2004/07/b122948.html
Another point about using humour against News Corporation, is that using serious tactics against "The Sun", which likes to see itself as a humorous paper, is a bad idea, as some people might see its serious tactics opponents as humourless fanatics.
Of course, in reality, "The Sun"'s "sense of humour" is the kind which school bullies, who cruelly laugh at their victims, but cannot take a joke which is directed at them have, which is why "The Sun" employs the world's worst comedian, Frankie Boyle, who has made sick, school bully type "jokes" about the disabled son of Peter Andre and Jordan, Rebecca Adlington, Ellen MacArthur, Venus Williams, and other people and subjects, as a columnist.
After Frankie Boyle made a "joke" about Down's Syndrome, Mencap spokesman Ismail Kaji was thus right to say that Boyle's "joke" was "no different to bullying". Cruelty is indeed not funny, unless you have the mentality of a school bully.
Despite the fact that "The Sun" has that kind of mentality, it is still a mistake to use serious tactics against a newspaper like that.
It is also a mistake to use cliched humorous tactics like custard pieing Rupert Murdoch in the Commons, especially given Murdoch's age. Groups in primarily Belgium, the US, Canada, and Britain have been using custard pies in the face to make bigoted, arrogant, or pompous powerful or influential people look ridiculous in public for decades, but the tactic is no longer funny, as there are only so many times you can see Bill Gates, free market fundamentalist guru Milton Friedman, anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly, and many other people with a creamy face before the joke gets stale.
Plus, pieing people is illegal, and leads to an assault charge, though in the case of the veteran Belgian piester Noel Godin, who may hold the world record for "most people pied" (unless veteran American piester Aron Kay does), French and Belgian police are sometimes laughing so much that they find it hard to fill out the assault with a custard pie charge sheet, or offer to pay his fine if he will pie a famous person they dislike.
So if people were to use a more original humorous approach by, for example, issuing press releases to publicise the fact that at a particular time, they were going to be asking the public to sign humorous, surreal anti-News Corporation petitions, and to boycott its products, outside certain large newsagents, there would be a chance that such a campaign could get some media publicity.
After all, Abbie Hoffman, the founder of the group which Aron Kay was involved with in the 1960's, the Yippies, regularly featured in American TV news broadcasts, because the original humorous approach which Hoffman used, meant that the TV networks were entertained by his amusing stunts, which made for great TV, and which allowed him to communicate his ideas to a vast audience on a regular basis.
Some of Abbie Hoffman's stunts were featured in the biopic "Steal This Movie!"
Without the media publicity that he received, anti-News Corporation groups would stay obscure. With such media publicity, they could be high profile, like the boycott apartheid products campaign was.
Moreover, with media publicity, such groups could be even more successful than the advertising boycott campaign which the African American activist group Color of Change ran against Glenn Beck, a Fox News presenter who has defended the original US Constitution for classifying black people as three fifths of a human being, who has defended slavery, who has called Barack Obama a racist, who has compared the Obama Administration to the Third Reich, and who has compared the Norwegian Labour Party youth camp where Anders Breivik massacred his victims to a Hitler Youth camp. You can read about, and watch Beck's comments here:
http://mediamatters.org/iphone/research/201101100039
http://www.politicususa.com/en/beck-defends-slavery
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/28/fox-host-glenn-beck-obama_n_246310.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8664738/Glenn-Beck-likens-Obama-administration-to-the-Third-Reich.html
You can read about Color of Change's successful campaign against Glenn Beck, which, according to "The Guardian" of July 18, is largely credited with driving him off Fox, on a liberal website:
http://www.politicususa.com/en/color-of-change-glenn-beck
Color of Change's successful campaign would be an excellent role model for any groups which were trying to persuade the same advertisers who deserted the "News of the World" to desert "The Sun", which also appears to have been involved in hacking, as I will now explain.
As this "Guardian" article about Sean Hoare, The "News of the World" 'phone hacking whistleblower who was found dead on July 18 reveals, Hoare said that he and Andy Coulson listened to hacked 'phones at "The Sun":
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/18/news-of-the-world-sean-hoare
As "Private Eye" pointed out in its July 22 issue, TV PR Ian Johnson, who ran the BBC's entertainment press office from 2001 to 2004, found that voicemail messages which friends and relatives left were not getting to him, and decided that as he was in charge of "EastEnders" publicity, he had become a target for someone who was hacking into his 'phone, so to see if he could trap them, he persuaded a friend to leave a fake message about the Dot Cotton character in "EastEnders" leaving the soap.
Later that day, he was 'phoned by a "Sun" journalist who asked him for a BBC comment, as they were going to run a front page story the next day with the headline "Dot Leaves Albert Square".
So, in the same way that the "News of the World" was deleting messages from friends and relatives on Milly Dowler's 'phone to make space for new ones which might give them news stories, "The Sun" was deleting messages from Ian Johnson's friends and relatives for its own sewer journalism benefit.
Jude Law began suing "The Sun" in July for allegedly hacking his 'phone to write four 2005 and 2006 stories, so it may also be the case that in the same way that the "News of the World" was hacking Jude Law's former partner Sienna Miller's 'phone, "The Sun" was hacking his.
Ideas for humorous, surreal, anti-News Corporation petitions could include the following:
Because there is a book called ""The Sun" Book of Short Stories" (Bantam, London, 2007); because "The Sun" once issued a tall book which featured full scale reproductions of some of their front pages; and because "The Sun" has completely fabricated stories on a number of occasions, a petition to Rupert Murdoch could ask him to tell his HarperCollins company to publish ""The Sun" Book of Tall Stories".
Because Rupert Murdoch announced in 1989 that he was a born again Christian; and because an imprint of his HarperCollins (Avon Books) publishes "The Satanic Bible", which was written by the late Church Of Satan founder Anton LaVey, a petition to God could ask for Rupert Murdoch to be sent to Hell, instead of to whatever part of Heaven is reserved for smut, smear, and sexism peddlers.
Because Fox News presenter Sean Hannity wrote a book called "Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty over Liberalism", which included a newspaper that is owned by Moonie cult leader Reverend Moon ("The Washington Times") in a list of "Great publications" (as Moon openly argues for the worldwide abolition of democracy, and its replacement by a global theocracy run by him, Hannity's book perhaps ought to have been titled, "Let Theocracy Rule: Winning the War for Tyranny over Liberalism"); because Fox News contributor Liz Trotta used to work for "The Washington Times"; because Fox News has a favourable view of George W. Bush, who has Moonie ties, as these 2 detailed salon.com and "Mother Jones" magazine articles explain; and because Reverend Moon modestly claims to be God incarnate, a petition to Reverend Moon could ask him to use his divine powers to create a permanent solar eclipse, so "The Sun" disappears forever:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/09/24/moon/print.html
http://motherjones.com/politics/2007/04/bush-sr-celebrate-rev-sun-myung-moon-again
Finally, because Reverend Moon owns a Latin American newspaper called "Tiempos del Mundo" ("Times of the World"); because Moon openly says that he wants to rule the world; because Rupert Murdoch owns "The Sun"; because that newspaper is aimed mainly at men; because Rupert Murdoch owns "The Times"; and because Rupert Murdoch did own the late, and very unlamented "News of the World", another petition to Rupert Murdoch, could ask him to set up a new global "News of the World" Sunday newspaper for Reverend Moon, and global daily sister papers called "The Sun" (which would be aimed at men), and "The Moon" (which would be aimed at women, as it would feature men in swimming trunks on page 3, other photos of half naked men, and adverts for a Moonie front group, the Women's Federation for World Peace).
In conclusion, I will point out that the main reason why Britain has ended up being scandalised by News Corporation's sewer journalism, is because, unlike much less sexually repressed countries like France and Holland, which have no "News of the World" type newspapers at all, because there are not enough sexually repressed people in those countries who want to read about which celebrity is having an affair with another celebrity, there are a lot of sexually repressed British people who derive vicarious pleasure from reading about such subjects, and who want "Sun" type smut in their newspaper.
French teenagers apparently top most sex acts per teenager per year surveys, and in a Durex global sex survey I saw, French people were in first place in the most sex acts per person per year table, and Dutch people in second place, so of course French and Dutch newspapers are not about providing titillation to the sexually repressed. Moreover, the smut and celebrity tittle tattle in British newspapers are the subject of much criticism and ridicule in France, which is why a French travel guide to Britain, warned tourists that you had to search hard on British newsstands to find a newspaper which tells you what is happening in the world, and which is why when the owner of the Paris evening paper, "France Soir", announced in 1992 that he wanted to convert his paper into a "Sun" type tabloid, there was such a storm of protest, that he was forced to drop the idea, and 1 of the 2 French equivalents of "Private Eye", "Le Canard Enchaine", joked that his newspaper should be renamed "Fesses Soir" ("Evening Buttocks").
There are celebrity magazines in France and Holland, but some French people are very critical of them, even though, despite the fact that they will of course use photos which were taken by paparazzi who harass their victims, they are no doubt not as cruel as newspapers like the "News of the World" and "The Sun", whose extreme cruelty can perhaps only be properly understood if you read 3 of the late Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich's books, "The Mass Psychology of Fascism", "The Function of the Orgasm", and "The Sexual Revolution", all 3 of which are among the 20th Century's most important books.
Wilhelm Reich's books were burned on bonfires by the Nazis, who ordered his arrest when they came to power, which forced him to flee to Denmark in disguise, presumably because they hated his argument that fascism (and thus its extreme cruelty) is only possible in sexually repressed and male dominated cultures.
It is true that there are many unhappiness related reasons why people are cruel, but sexual misery is the most important one.
A Wilhelm Reich inspired Yugoslavian political sex film, "The Mysteries of the Organism", so angered Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, perhaps because the film features lines like "socialism without free love is like a graveyard", or perhaps because Reich called cruel Communism "red fascism", that Brezhnev said he would order an invasion of Yugoslavia if the film were ever shown in the USSR.
Wilhelm Reich's free love and female equality ideas are also a threat to religious totalitarians, as all dictatorships and theocracies can only exist if their peoples are kept sexually repressed, and if men dominate their societies.
That is why someone who knew Iranian leader Ayatollah Khameini, said in a July 31 BBC News 24 "Our World" documentary about him, that he hates talking about sexual issues. It goes without saying that he also opposes female equality.
Wilhelm Reich's anti-authoritarian ideologies ideas are also a threat to free market fundamentalists like the Republican Party which Rupert Murdoch supports, which is why the late Republican FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who, like Rupert Murdoch the exposer of politicians' sex lives, was widely feared by American leaders, as he ordered his agents to spy on them so he could publicise their sexual indiscretions if they threatened his power, is now known to have been concerned about the way that Elvis Presley was sexualising American youth.
The weekly free magazine "Short List" published an article in its July 21 issue called "Icons spied on by the FBI" which was based on declassified FBI documents that revealed the Bureau's surveillance of Elvis Presley and other major stars (John Lennon, Charlie Chaplin, Ernest Hemingway, and Frank Sinatra). The article stated:
"Much of the surveillance was based around extortion attempts on Presley and his [prescription] drug abuse, but they were also concerned about the sexual energy which he whipped up in America's youth, with one report labelling him a 'definite danger to the security of the United States.'"
Of course, any writer who managed to enrage the Nazis and the leader of the Soviet Communists, and whose ideas are a threat to Islamic fundamentalists and free market fundamentalists, must have been on to something, so the 3 Wilhelm Reich books are very definitely worth reading, if you want to understand the extreme cruelty of newspapers like the "News of the World" and "The Sun", and why British society allows such newspapers to flourish.
When Reich was looking for somewhere to go into exile after he fled to Denmark, he dismissed the idea of going to Britain, as he regarded it as a very sexually repressed country which would not be receptive to his ideas, and ended up moving from Denmark to the US, after spells in Sweden and Norway. Of course, in the authoritarian 1930's, 1940's, and 1950's, none of those countries were receptive to his ideas, and it was not until the anti-authoritarianism 1960's that Reich's ideas became popular among large numbers of Abbie Hoffman type young people who were trying to improve the sexual attitudes and behaviour of their societies.
Even today, the fact that, unlike other European countries and the US, state schools in Britain have individuality squashing uniforms, which stop people in those schools making friends and meeting sexual partners, as they find it harder to recognise fellow members of their respective musical and other tribes than people in American and other European state schools, indicates that Britain is still an authoritarian society which is closer to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, which forced their young people to wear Hitler Youth, League of German Girls, and Komsomol uniforms, than the US and other European countries are.
That is why Britain has a far worse racist violence problem than any other country in the EU (authoritarian people do not like people who are different to them). Pages 173 to 179 of this EU report reveal that there is several times more racist violence in Britain than there is in Germany for example, which is why British people making jokes about "Nazi" Germans amuse me:
http://fra.europa.eu/fraWebsite/material/pub/comparativestudy/CS-RV-main.pdf
Authoritarianism is also why Britain has such a big school bullying problem (as bullies are authoritarians, they do not like people who are different to them, so they pick on racial and sexual minority people, overweight people, clever people, and so on). This 2007 UNICEF survey of child and adolescent happiness in 19 European countries, the US, and Canada, found that British children and adolescents were less happy than children and adolescents in any of the other countries, clearly partly because of the level of bullying in British schools (the table on page 25 reveals that British 11, 13, and 15 year olds were less likely to say that their peers were "kind and helpful" than their counterparts in any of the other countries which were surveyed):
http://www.unicef.org/media/files/ChildPovertyReport.pdf
The gender apartheid in some British schools also makes Britain's sexual repression / authoritarianism problem worse of course.
So it is no wonder that so many leading British politicians have fascist links.
I discussed the BNP and UKIP leaderships' fascist and Holocaust denial links in these 9 articles for this anti-fascist website (putting my name into its search engine brings all of them up):
http://lancasteruaf.blogspot.com/search?q=roddy+newman
In this article, then Labour MEP Richard Corbett discussed the UKIP leadership's fascist and Holocaust denial links, including an unofficial pact with the BNP which the BNP has admitted to the existence of:
http://www.richardcorbett.org.uk/assets/docs/briefing/theres-something-about-ukip.pdf
Finally, in this article, I discussed the modern Conservative Party leadership's fascist links:
http://www.bristolanticutsalliance.org.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/cameron_links.pdf
Because leading British politicians have fascist connections, it is also not surprising that the BNP possibly has more terrorist links than any other fascist party on the planet, as I showed in this article, "The BNP and terrorism", which also discussed British fascist terrorists who are not linked to the BNP:
http://lancasteruaf.blogspot.com/2009/11/bnp-and-terrorism.html
As "The Sun" has always tried to benefit from the popularity of music in Britain, which buys more music per person than any other country in the world, by, for example, filling the centre pages of the first issue after Rupert Murdoch took over with a photo of a naked woman at the feet of the fully clothed Rolling Stones (note that on the Murdoch "Sun"'s first day, its women are just sex objects macho ideology was already evident, which is partly why Rupert Murdoch very definitely needs to set up "The Moon", so that after 42 years, News Corporation can prove that it is no longer macho, by not only dropping the yobbish tone of "Sun" articles, but also by publishing photos of half naked men as well as half naked women), it would be a good idea to use music in any campaigns to encourage people to boycott News Corporation products.
Appropriate songs which could be played while people gather signatures for surreal petitions, include: "News of the World", the 1978 number 27 hit by the Jam, which dismissed the rag as "just a comic, not much more"; a recently rereleased as a download, 1994 solo track from Queen drummer Roger Taylor's "Happiness?" CD, "Dear Mr. Murdoch", whose numerous scathing lines include: "They stain all they touch, they're real woman haters", "Dear Mr. Murdoch you're a dangerous chap, With your jingoist lingo we're drowning in crap", "And dear Mr. Murdoch what have you done?, You're not quite as nice as Attila the Hun" ; all of the 1977 Queen album "News of the World", which is not about a certain ex-newspaper, but which is appropriate music, because of the Roger Taylor song; the July 2011, also numerous scathing lines about Hillsborough, the Milly Dowler case, and corrupt police Billy Bragg song, "Never Buy The Sun", which has been released as a free download, and which describes Rupert Murdoch as "the Devil"; and a July 2011 Robots in Disguise track on their "Happiness v Sadness" CD, "Lies", which is also now available as a free download. Its again, numerous scathing lines include: "Why d'u have to deal in gossip?", "You lazy hack typing fiction into fact", "No I don't want my London Standard, Or the Sun or the Star or all your tabloid blah", and "And why are you obsessed with sex?"
Here are videos for all 4 of those songs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAXeUKPwBj4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pecFVzIfCNA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uWw7kuiCss
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjoMLA06fdk
This article is about those overlooked Murdoch scandals.
It discusses: 1 crucial aspect of the paying police scandal, and 1 crucial aspect of the 'phone hacking scandal which most people are unaware of; 2 examples of Rupert Murdoch media in this country and Australia driving people to kill themselves; numerous proven examples of Murdoch media in this country, the US, and Australia fabricating news stories; the racism of Murdoch's Fox News network; prominent Americans who say that Fox News, which is notorious in liberal circles in the US for its fabrications, is like a fascist or Communist propaganda operation; Rupert Murdoch's political hero, Ronald Reagan, appointing 5 pro-Third Reich people to government jobs when he was elected US President in 1980; Murdoch's love affair with China's brutal Communist regime; Julian Assange's January admission that WikiLeaks has US diplomatic cables whose content should worry Murdoch and News Corporation, and that those "insurance" cables will be published if anything happens to him or WikiLeaks; Murdoch's Australian media empire illegally paying police in that country; "The Sun" employing the cruel "comedian" Frankie Boyle as a columnist; "The Sun" hacking scandal, which has not been reported very much at all, despite the fact that there is now good evidence to prove that the paper was involved in hacking, which is why Jude Law is now suing them for allegedly hacking his 'phone; campaigns which are now trying to persuade people to boycott News Corporation's products; some ideas for a humorous boycott campaign against News Corporation; and finally, the national culture reasons why France and Holland have no "News of the World" and "Sun" type newspapers, while Britain does.
Scotland Yard has announced that its Operation Elveden will look into claims that a "small number" of police officers were illegally given money by the "News of the World" between 2003 and 2007, but Paul McMullan, who was deputy features editor at the "News of the World" from 1994 to 2001, admitted during Radio 4's July 7 "World at One" programme, that in 1995, one of his colleagues at the paper paid a police officer for a tip off that the daughter of the film actor Denholm Elliott was begging outside a London tube station, and occasionally working as a prostitute, and also admitted that there was a "going rate" of between "two and five hundred pounds" for police tip offs of that sort, so the illegal payments appear to have begun long before 2003, and to have involved more cases than Denholm Elliott's daughter Jennifer, which means that the paying police scandal is bigger than most people realise.
Paul McMullan was also quoted in "The Guardian" of September 8, 2010, as having revealingly said that the "News of the World" used Glenn Mulcaire's hacking for "just about every story", which means that the hacking scandal is also bigger than most people realise.
Paul McMullan also admitted during the "World at One" programme, that his story about Jennifer Elliott, and his subsequent "News of the World" stories about her drug problems, "humiliated and destroyed her", and that he feels guilty about the fact that she later committed suicide.
Jennifer Elliott was not the first person who had been driven to kill themselves by the Rupert Murdoch media empire's cruel and sexually repressed obsession with publicising people's private lives, which the public should only be told about if they, for example, expose the hypocrisy of a sexually moralistic politician or cleric.
In 1964, one of Rupert Murdoch's Australian newspapers, the Sydney "Daily Mirror", printed an entirely fabricated story under the headline, "WE HAVE SCHOOLGIRL'S ORGY DIARY", which led to a 13 year old boy who was named in the story, Digby Bamford, being expelled from his school and hanging himself. The 14 year old schoolgirl, who was also expelled from her school, was later medically examined by a doctor for the local Child Welfare Department, and was found to be a virgin.
In 1971, the "News of the World" ran a similar entirely fabricated story about a 15 year old dancer in the "Top of the Pops" audience, Samantha MacAlpine, which claimed that a "leatherette bound book" she had written in, revealed that she and other dancers in the audience, were involved in sexual "promiscuity" with musicians who appeared on the show. She then committed suicide, and the pathologist revealed that she had also been a virgin.
Rupert Murdoch's media empire has in fact become notorious for its completely fabricated stories, which is why an American comedian turned Democrat Senator from Minnesota, Al Franken, has written a humorous book which includes entire chapters about the proven lies of 2 presenters who work for Murdoch's Fox News, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right" (Penguin, London, 2004).
Al Franken's book is very definitely worth reading, because (a) it is amusing, because (b) it is, "The book that the Murdoch-owned Fox News tried to prevent from being published", to cite "The Observer", and because (c) Fox News unsuccessfully sued Franken for using their "Fair and balanced" slogan in his book title.
Another example of Fox News's disinterest in the truth, is the fact that it has broadcast digitally altered photos of 2 "New York Times" reporters which gave them yellow teeth, and in one case, a receding hairline, and dark patches under his eyes:
http://mediamatters.org/research/200807020002?f=h_top Yet another, is its decision to make it look like a Sarah Palin book signing had attracted a huge crowd, by reusing footage from a 2008 election John McCain / Sarah Palin campaign rally:
http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20091119/ts_ynews/ynews_ts988 Fox News used the same rebroadcast old footage to make a right wing event look bigger tactic, to inflate the size of a crowd at a Michele Bachmann led protest against Barack Obama's health care reform:
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/nov/13/nation/na-hannity-crowd13 Since then, Fox News's Sean Hannity has backed Michele Bachmann's entirely incorrect claim that African Americans were more likely to grow up in a 2 parent household under slavery, than they are under Barack Obama:
http://www.newshounds.us/2011/07/13/hannity_endorses_controversial_slavery_language_as_he_attacks_media_for_criticizing_bachmanns_marriage_pledge.php#more Al Franken's book exposed Sean Hannity's dishonesty in the chapter "Fun with Racism", as it pointed out on page 269, that of the 15 people who were then on the advisory panel of the African American Republican Leadership Council, 13, including Hannity, were white, and 1 of the 2 who was not, former Massachusetts Senator Edward W. Brooke III, had never heard of the group, and had no idea why they were fraudulently claiming that he was their honorary chairman.
Given Sean Hannity's backing for Michele Bachmann's rosy tinted view of slavery, it is even more bizarre that he should have been on the AARLC advisory panel.
Perhaps Fox News's racism, which led to it being sued by a black employee who was subjected to racist comments by his colleagues, and then fired for complaining about them, explains why he is:
http://gawker.com/5670666/fox-news-hit-with-5-million-workplace-racism-suit As Rupert Murdoch was a supporter of the last Republican President, George W. Bush, and as Sean Hannity is a fan of Michele Bachmann, it is disgraceful that a woman with a rosy tinted view of the American slavery era, will quite possibly, if she becomes the Republican candidate for President, be able to rely on support from Fox News, and the rest of Murdoch's American media in the 2012 election, and in the White House if she is elected.
It is certainly hardly likely that Fox News will back Barack Obama in 2012, because most of the people who could be Republican candidates for President next year, are working for Fox News as commentators, as this article points out:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/27/fox-news-has-nearly-all-p_n_740070.html Moreover, a Fox News contributor, Liz Trotta, has joked during a broadcast about assassinating Barack Obama, who, not surprisingly, is not a big fan of Fox:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/michaelcalderone/0508/Fox_analyst_apologizes_for_Obama_assassination_joke.html It is inconceivable that a contributor to ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, C-SPAN, or MSNBC would joke on air about assassinating an American politician, so George Soros, who grew up under Hungary's fascist and Communist regimes, before emigrating to the US in 1956, was right to compare Fox News journalism to Nazi and Communist propaganda:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/onmedia/0611/Soros_on_Murdoch_Ailes_Their_lies_shall_not_stand.html The American documentary, "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism", which was partly based on testimony from numerous former Fox News employees, also features former CBS Evening News Anchor Walter Cronkite, who describes Fox News as "far right wing", and former Fox News contributor Larry Johnson, who talks about the almost "Stalinist system" at Fox News, which backs up what George Soros said about Fox.
You can watch "Outfoxed" here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6737097743434902428# Larry Johnson's "Stalinist system" remark might sound far fetched to some people, but this "Daily Telegraph" article, which is not online, but which was republished by the Melbourne newspaper "The Age", quoted an unnamed former senior Fox executive as having said that the network spied on its staff by reading their emails, and made them "feel they were being watched", which led to Fox employees working in conditions which were like "Russia at the height of the Soviet era":
http://www.theage.com.au/world/black-ops-and-espionage-inside-fox-news-20110721-1hpkn.html "Outfoxed" also quotes former Fox News employees who point out that Rupert Murdoch is a big fan of the late Ronald Reagan, and that Fox celebrated Reagan's birthday, so as Fox has been compared to Nazi and Communist propaganda, I ought to point out that Reagan, and his Vice President George H. W. Bush, appointed 5 pro-Third Reich people to government jobs.
When the Reagan-Bush team won the 1980 election, they appointed former Waffen (Armed) SS officer General Fritz Kraemer to their Star Wars advisory panel. Kraemer, who was already working for the Pentagon Plans Division, was a mentor to another Reagan-Bush appointee, Secretary of State General Alexander Haig. A second Reagan-Bush adviser, was a former officer in Hitler's Wehrmacht, General Albert Wedemeyer. A third, was the German / Irish American Pat Buchanan, the 1985-1987 White House Communications Director.
Buchanan is a notorious Hitler regime apologist who allegedly advised the Reagan-Bush Administration to ignore Jewish protests against Reagan's forthcoming 1985 official visit to a partly Waffen SS cemetery in West Germany. Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel alleged that at a meeting with Jewish leaders at the Reagan-Bush White House, "The only one really defending the trip was Pat Buchanan, saying, 'We cannot give the perception of the President being subjected to Jewish pressure.'" ("Is Buchanan Courting Bias?", "Washington Post", February 29, 1992). Buchanan denies making this alleged remark.
Another Reagan-Bush appointee, was J. Peter Grace, a chemicals magnate, who was put in charge of the US Government's Private Sector Survey on Cost Control. Among Grace's employees, was Otto Ambros, who was the inventer of Zyklon B, the poison gas which was used to kill Jews at Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, and so on.
A final Reagan-Bush appointee, was Lev Dobriansky, who was made US Ambassador to the Bahamas. He edited a journal called "Ukrainian Quarterly", whose politics can be gauged from the fact that it ran an article which praised General Pavlo Shandruk, the creator of the Waffen SS Galician Division, which worked at Auschwitz.
Shandruk also fought against the US Army at some place called Bitburg.
Finally, I ought to point out that when he was Governor of California (1967-1975), Ronald Reagan considered putting leading figures in the California counterculture in camps which sound like Nazi concentration camps, and the Soviet Gulag camps. To quote Simon Wells's "Charles Manson: Coming Down Fast" (Hodder and Stoughton, London, 2010), which is a biography of the notorious multiple murderer and cult leader Charles Manson: "As California was fast becoming the epicentre of radicalisation, Governor Ronald Reagan began to seriously consider locking up the hippie scene's chief protagonists in internment camps." (p.40)
As this "Guardian" article explains, in 2004, Fox News was forced to apologise after it attributed damaging statements to George W. Bush's opponent, John Kerry, which were complete fabrications, and which were the kind of 100% false propaganda that the Nazis and the Eastern European Communists were notorious for:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2004/oct/04/digitalmedia.uselections2004 In its July 8 issue, "Private Eye" pointed out that when Rupert Murdoch was interviewed by the House of Lords communications committee in New York on September 17, 2007, he said, "he believed that Sky News would be more popular if it were more like the Fox Channel. Then it would be 'a proper alternative to the BBC'".
He also told the committee that, to quote their minutes, "Sky News could become more like Fox without a change to the impartiality rules in the UK. For example, Sky had not yet made the presentational progress that Fox News had. He stated that the only reason that Sky News was not more like Fox News was that 'nobody at Sky listens to me.'"
Because Fox News has been involved in broadcasting fabrications, it is certainly a good thing that Sky News is not more like Fox News. If Rupert Murdoch, who of course currently owns a 39% controlling shareholding in BSkyB, had been allowed to take 100% control of it, would he have told Sky News staff to make their station like Fox News, or face the sack?
After all, in "The Guardian" of July 16, Polly Toynbee revealed that, "Already the low rumble of Murdoch commentators demanding a change to the law on political bias in broadcasting was tilling the ground for the Foxification of British television...".
The proven lies of Rupert Murdoch's British employees, are of course generally better known in Britain than Fox News's fabrications.
They include the completely fabricated stories which "The Sun" printed about: the Hillsborough disaster; Elton John supposedly having sex with underage male prostitutes; refugees supposedly eating swans; Tony Benn's supposed insanity; and Peter Tatchell supposedly going to the Gay Olympics (which was part of a "Sun" hate campaign against him during the 1983 Bermondsey bye election that led to him being physically assaulted by fascists, and other homophobes, more than 300 times in the following decades); the completely fabricated stories which "The Sunday Times" and "The Sun" printed about Carmen Proetta; the November 12, 2007 "Sun" story about Ken Livingstone which claimed that he had accused the 7/7 bombers of killing "the wrong people"; and the July 23 "Sun" front page story, "NORWAY'S 9/11", which also featured the smaller headline, "'AL-QAEDA' MASSACRE".
Three days after that Ken Livingstone story, "The Sun" was forced to print an apology on page 36 which said:
"In Monday's Sun we reported that London Mayor Ken Livingstone had accused the 7/7 bombers of killing "the wrong people"...In fact no such comment was made by Ken Livingstone and we apologise to Mr Livingstone for the error."
The "'AL-QAEDA' MASSACRE" was of course the work of far right Christian fundamentalist Freemason terrorist Anders Breivik, who claims to have co-founded the Norwegian Defence League, which is under the control of the anti-Islam English Defence League. He was also a member and local official of Norway's Progress Party, who have called for Islam to be banned in Norway, but Rupert Murdoch's newspapers never allow little things like facts to get in the way of a chance to smear Muslims, which is why his "Today" newspaper, which thankfully closed down in November 1995, ran an April 20, 1995 front page story about the Oklahoma City bombing which was headlined "IN THE NAME OF ISLAM". The real Oklahoma bombing culprit was of course Timothy McVeigh, who was inspired by a fascist novel which openly advocates the killing of all of the world's billions of non-white people, including Muslims, "The Turner Diaries" by the late William Pierce, who was a big inspiration to the BNP, as I explained in this article:
https://operationblackvote.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/questiontime-for-bnps-fascist-links/ You can see the July 23 "Sun" front page here:
http://twitpic.com/5u6n2l You can read about the "Today" front page on page 141 of Margaret Kleffner Nydell's book, "Understanding Arabs: A Guide for Modern Times" (Intercultural Press, London, 2005).
As it has now emerged that Scotland Yard has told the relatives of 7/7 victims that the "News of the World" may have hacked their 'phones, and as the FBI are investigating the possibility that the "News of the World" tried to hack the 'phones of 9/11 victims, "The Sun"'s lies about Ken Livingstone and the Norway massacre, and "Today"'s lies about the Oklahoma City bombing, were particularly disgusting.
As "The Sun" fabricated a comment about the 7/7 bombing, it is not surprising that the Murdoch media empire has been involved in publicising other war on terror fabrications.
The Iranian nuclear bomb programme is a serious threat to the world, because of the Iranian Islamist tyranny's thoroughly vicious nature, because of its willingness to engage in terrorism, and because, like all types of religious and secular fundamentalists, it has a weak grasp on reality, but that does not mean that "The Times" should be publishing a document about the Iranian nuclear programme which US intelligence sources have branded a forgery:
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/07/02/rupert-murdoch%E2%80%99s-london-times-published-forged-iran-nuke-document-u-s-intelligence-concludes/ The just cited article quotes former CIA counterterrorism official Philip Giraldi, who revealed that Rupert Murdoch's media empire has published other similar fabrications: “The Rupert Murdoch chain has been used extensively to publish false intelligence from the Israelis and occasionally from the British government”.
Of course, Rupert Murdoch's empire does not need governments to make up war related fabrications for it to publish, as it is perfectly capable of creating its own. For example, the completely fabricated "Sun" interview with Marcia McKay, the widow of Ian McKay, who won a Victoria Cross during the Falklands War. That "interview" is mentioned on page 420 of Australian journalist John Pilger's book, "Hidden Agendas" (Random House, London, 1999).
Although "The Sun" fabricated a war on terror related statement by Ken Livingstone, who it calls Red Ken, because it does not like his democratic socialist views, Rupert Murdoch is a friend of the Chinese Communist Party, which has of course killed tens of millions of people during its 62 years in power, mainly because of the vast famine which Mao's Great Leap Forward directly led to.
As John Pilger points out on pages 530-531 of "Hidden Agendas", Rupert Murdoch has published a biography of the former Chinese dictator Deng Xiaoping which was written by Deng's daughter, has broadcast a documentary series which was based on the biography, has said of China that, "The truth is - and we Americans don't like to admit it - that authoritarian countries can work", and has helped the Chinese Communists to censor the Internet:
"In 1997, with the People's Daily, he launched his 'Chinabyte' Internet service in English. Politics will be censored; the Chinese users' view of the West will be the Murdoch view."
As Rupert Murdoch's fellow Australian Julian Assange has pointed out in this interview, China is the world's worst censor of the Internet:
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/01/china-wikileaks-assange Julian Assange also said during that January interview, that WikiLeaks is in possession of US embassy cables whose content should worry Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation, and that those cables were "insurance" files which would be released if anything happened to him or WikiLeaks.
Red Rupe, the purveyor of Communist style 100% false propaganda, also does not seem to like democratic greens very much, because his Melbourne "Herald Sun" newspaper was censured by the Australian Press Council after it made up a number of lies about Australian Green Party policies:
http://www.presscouncil.org.au/pcsite/adj/1270.html Those lies were not surprising, as Rupert Murdoch's Australian newspapers are climate change deniers, and as another Murdoch newspaper, "The Australian", has called in an editorial for the Australian Greens to be "destroyed at the ballot box":
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/needed-a-policy-for-julia-direction-for-labor/story-e6frg71x-1225916087426 Those dishonest lies were not surprising for another reason, the fact that the Australian arm of Rupert Murdoch's media empire, News Limited, is just as happy to dishonestly break the law by paying police as its News International British arm is, as this article explains:
http://www.meattradenewsdaily.co.uk/news/140711/australia___police_payments_by_news_limited_exposed_in_australia_.aspx Rupert Murdoch's sewer journalism has of course led to the creation of groups which are campaigning for a boycott of the Murdoch media empire, and if those groups were to use humour, the boycott campaign might be able to attract significant media attention, and thus public support. Humour might also persuade many people who are not currently boycotting all of News Corporation's products, to find out what they are online, so they can do so, because people do not want to be associated with things which are objects of ridicule, in case their friends and family regard them as ridiculous.
As the French comic playwright Moliere once rightly said, people do not mind being called wicked, but they hate being laughed at.
That fact may explain why, as this article explains, Fox News threatened legal action against the makers of "The Simpsons" (which is broadcast by its sister channel, Fox Entertainment), after they ridiculed its Republican bias with headlines like "Do Democrats Cause Cancer?":
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2004/07/b122948.html Another point about using humour against News Corporation, is that using serious tactics against "The Sun", which likes to see itself as a humorous paper, is a bad idea, as some people might see its serious tactics opponents as humourless fanatics.
Of course, in reality, "The Sun"'s "sense of humour" is the kind which school bullies, who cruelly laugh at their victims, but cannot take a joke which is directed at them have, which is why "The Sun" employs the world's worst comedian, Frankie Boyle, who has made sick, school bully type "jokes" about the disabled son of Peter Andre and Jordan, Rebecca Adlington, Ellen MacArthur, Venus Williams, and other people and subjects, as a columnist.
After Frankie Boyle made a "joke" about Down's Syndrome, Mencap spokesman Ismail Kaji was thus right to say that Boyle's "joke" was "no different to bullying". Cruelty is indeed not funny, unless you have the mentality of a school bully.
Despite the fact that "The Sun" has that kind of mentality, it is still a mistake to use serious tactics against a newspaper like that.
It is also a mistake to use cliched humorous tactics like custard pieing Rupert Murdoch in the Commons, especially given Murdoch's age. Groups in primarily Belgium, the US, Canada, and Britain have been using custard pies in the face to make bigoted, arrogant, or pompous powerful or influential people look ridiculous in public for decades, but the tactic is no longer funny, as there are only so many times you can see Bill Gates, free market fundamentalist guru Milton Friedman, anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly, and many other people with a creamy face before the joke gets stale.
Plus, pieing people is illegal, and leads to an assault charge, though in the case of the veteran Belgian piester Noel Godin, who may hold the world record for "most people pied" (unless veteran American piester Aron Kay does), French and Belgian police are sometimes laughing so much that they find it hard to fill out the assault with a custard pie charge sheet, or offer to pay his fine if he will pie a famous person they dislike.
So if people were to use a more original humorous approach by, for example, issuing press releases to publicise the fact that at a particular time, they were going to be asking the public to sign humorous, surreal anti-News Corporation petitions, and to boycott its products, outside certain large newsagents, there would be a chance that such a campaign could get some media publicity.
After all, Abbie Hoffman, the founder of the group which Aron Kay was involved with in the 1960's, the Yippies, regularly featured in American TV news broadcasts, because the original humorous approach which Hoffman used, meant that the TV networks were entertained by his amusing stunts, which made for great TV, and which allowed him to communicate his ideas to a vast audience on a regular basis.
Some of Abbie Hoffman's stunts were featured in the biopic "Steal This Movie!"
Without the media publicity that he received, anti-News Corporation groups would stay obscure. With such media publicity, they could be high profile, like the boycott apartheid products campaign was.
Moreover, with media publicity, such groups could be even more successful than the advertising boycott campaign which the African American activist group Color of Change ran against Glenn Beck, a Fox News presenter who has defended the original US Constitution for classifying black people as three fifths of a human being, who has defended slavery, who has called Barack Obama a racist, who has compared the Obama Administration to the Third Reich, and who has compared the Norwegian Labour Party youth camp where Anders Breivik massacred his victims to a Hitler Youth camp. You can read about, and watch Beck's comments here:
http://mediamatters.org/iphone/research/201101100039 http://www.politicususa.com/en/beck-defends-slavery http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/28/fox-host-glenn-beck-obama_n_246310.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8664738/Glenn-Beck-likens-Obama-administration-to-the-Third-Reich.html You can read about Color of Change's successful campaign against Glenn Beck, which, according to "The Guardian" of July 18, is largely credited with driving him off Fox, on a liberal website:
http://www.politicususa.com/en/color-of-change-glenn-beck Color of Change's successful campaign would be an excellent role model for any groups which were trying to persuade the same advertisers who deserted the "News of the World" to desert "The Sun", which also appears to have been involved in hacking, as I will now explain.
As this "Guardian" article about Sean Hoare, The "News of the World" 'phone hacking whistleblower who was found dead on July 18 reveals, Hoare said that he and Andy Coulson listened to hacked 'phones at "The Sun":
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/18/news-of-the-world-sean-hoare As "Private Eye" pointed out in its July 22 issue, TV PR Ian Johnson, who ran the BBC's entertainment press office from 2001 to 2004, found that voicemail messages which friends and relatives left were not getting to him, and decided that as he was in charge of "EastEnders" publicity, he had become a target for someone who was hacking into his 'phone, so to see if he could trap them, he persuaded a friend to leave a fake message about the Dot Cotton character in "EastEnders" leaving the soap.
Later that day, he was 'phoned by a "Sun" journalist who asked him for a BBC comment, as they were going to run a front page story the next day with the headline "Dot Leaves Albert Square".
So, in the same way that the "News of the World" was deleting messages from friends and relatives on Milly Dowler's 'phone to make space for new ones which might give them news stories, "The Sun" was deleting messages from Ian Johnson's friends and relatives for its own sewer journalism benefit.
Jude Law began suing "The Sun" in July for allegedly hacking his 'phone to write four 2005 and 2006 stories, so it may also be the case that in the same way that the "News of the World" was hacking Jude Law's former partner Sienna Miller's 'phone, "The Sun" was hacking his.
Ideas for humorous, surreal, anti-News Corporation petitions could include the following:
Because there is a book called ""The Sun" Book of Short Stories" (Bantam, London, 2007); because "The Sun" once issued a tall book which featured full scale reproductions of some of their front pages; and because "The Sun" has completely fabricated stories on a number of occasions, a petition to Rupert Murdoch could ask him to tell his HarperCollins company to publish ""The Sun" Book of Tall Stories".
Because Rupert Murdoch announced in 1989 that he was a born again Christian; and because an imprint of his HarperCollins (Avon Books) publishes "The Satanic Bible", which was written by the late Church Of Satan founder Anton LaVey, a petition to God could ask for Rupert Murdoch to be sent to Hell, instead of to whatever part of Heaven is reserved for smut, smear, and sexism peddlers.
Because Fox News presenter Sean Hannity wrote a book called "Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty over Liberalism", which included a newspaper that is owned by Moonie cult leader Reverend Moon ("The Washington Times") in a list of "Great publications" (as Moon openly argues for the worldwide abolition of democracy, and its replacement by a global theocracy run by him, Hannity's book perhaps ought to have been titled, "Let Theocracy Rule: Winning the War for Tyranny over Liberalism"); because Fox News contributor Liz Trotta used to work for "The Washington Times"; because Fox News has a favourable view of George W. Bush, who has Moonie ties, as these 2 detailed salon.com and "Mother Jones" magazine articles explain; and because Reverend Moon modestly claims to be God incarnate, a petition to Reverend Moon could ask him to use his divine powers to create a permanent solar eclipse, so "The Sun" disappears forever:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/09/24/moon/print.html http://motherjones.com/politics/2007/04/bush-sr-celebrate-rev-sun-myung-moon-again Finally, because Reverend Moon owns a Latin American newspaper called "Tiempos del Mundo" ("Times of the World"); because Moon openly says that he wants to rule the world; because Rupert Murdoch owns "The Sun"; because that newspaper is aimed mainly at men; because Rupert Murdoch owns "The Times"; and because Rupert Murdoch did own the late, and very unlamented "News of the World", another petition to Rupert Murdoch, could ask him to set up a new global "News of the World" Sunday newspaper for Reverend Moon, and global daily sister papers called "The Sun" (which would be aimed at men), and "The Moon" (which would be aimed at women, as it would feature men in swimming trunks on page 3, other photos of half naked men, and adverts for a Moonie front group, the Women's Federation for World Peace).
In conclusion, I will point out that the main reason why Britain has ended up being scandalised by News Corporation's sewer journalism, is because, unlike much less sexually repressed countries like France and Holland, which have no "News of the World" type newspapers at all, because there are not enough sexually repressed people in those countries who want to read about which celebrity is having an affair with another celebrity, there are a lot of sexually repressed British people who derive vicarious pleasure from reading about such subjects, and who want "Sun" type smut in their newspaper.
French teenagers apparently top most sex acts per teenager per year surveys, and in a Durex global sex survey I saw, French people were in first place in the most sex acts per person per year table, and Dutch people in second place, so of course French and Dutch newspapers are not about providing titillation to the sexually repressed. Moreover, the smut and celebrity tittle tattle in British newspapers are the subject of much criticism and ridicule in France, which is why a French travel guide to Britain, warned tourists that you had to search hard on British newsstands to find a newspaper which tells you what is happening in the world, and which is why when the owner of the Paris evening paper, "France Soir", announced in 1992 that he wanted to convert his paper into a "Sun" type tabloid, there was such a storm of protest, that he was forced to drop the idea, and 1 of the 2 French equivalents of "Private Eye", "Le Canard Enchaine", joked that his newspaper should be renamed "Fesses Soir" ("Evening Buttocks").
There are celebrity magazines in France and Holland, but some French people are very critical of them, even though, despite the fact that they will of course use photos which were taken by paparazzi who harass their victims, they are no doubt not as cruel as newspapers like the "News of the World" and "The Sun", whose extreme cruelty can perhaps only be properly understood if you read 3 of the late Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich's books, "The Mass Psychology of Fascism", "The Function of the Orgasm", and "The Sexual Revolution", all 3 of which are among the 20th Century's most important books.
Wilhelm Reich's books were burned on bonfires by the Nazis, who ordered his arrest when they came to power, which forced him to flee to Denmark in disguise, presumably because they hated his argument that fascism (and thus its extreme cruelty) is only possible in sexually repressed and male dominated cultures.
It is true that there are many unhappiness related reasons why people are cruel, but sexual misery is the most important one.
A Wilhelm Reich inspired Yugoslavian political sex film, "The Mysteries of the Organism", so angered Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, perhaps because the film features lines like "socialism without free love is like a graveyard", or perhaps because Reich called cruel Communism "red fascism", that Brezhnev said he would order an invasion of Yugoslavia if the film were ever shown in the USSR.
Wilhelm Reich's free love and female equality ideas are also a threat to religious totalitarians, as all dictatorships and theocracies can only exist if their peoples are kept sexually repressed, and if men dominate their societies.
That is why someone who knew Iranian leader Ayatollah Khameini, said in a July 31 BBC News 24 "Our World" documentary about him, that he hates talking about sexual issues. It goes without saying that he also opposes female equality.
Wilhelm Reich's anti-authoritarian ideologies ideas are also a threat to free market fundamentalists like the Republican Party which Rupert Murdoch supports, which is why the late Republican FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who, like Rupert Murdoch the exposer of politicians' sex lives, was widely feared by American leaders, as he ordered his agents to spy on them so he could publicise their sexual indiscretions if they threatened his power, is now known to have been concerned about the way that Elvis Presley was sexualising American youth.
The weekly free magazine "Short List" published an article in its July 21 issue called "Icons spied on by the FBI" which was based on declassified FBI documents that revealed the Bureau's surveillance of Elvis Presley and other major stars (John Lennon, Charlie Chaplin, Ernest Hemingway, and Frank Sinatra). The article stated:
"Much of the surveillance was based around extortion attempts on Presley and his [prescription] drug abuse, but they were also concerned about the sexual energy which he whipped up in America's youth, with one report labelling him a 'definite danger to the security of the United States.'"
Of course, any writer who managed to enrage the Nazis and the leader of the Soviet Communists, and whose ideas are a threat to Islamic fundamentalists and free market fundamentalists, must have been on to something, so the 3 Wilhelm Reich books are very definitely worth reading, if you want to understand the extreme cruelty of newspapers like the "News of the World" and "The Sun", and why British society allows such newspapers to flourish.
When Reich was looking for somewhere to go into exile after he fled to Denmark, he dismissed the idea of going to Britain, as he regarded it as a very sexually repressed country which would not be receptive to his ideas, and ended up moving from Denmark to the US, after spells in Sweden and Norway. Of course, in the authoritarian 1930's, 1940's, and 1950's, none of those countries were receptive to his ideas, and it was not until the anti-authoritarianism 1960's that Reich's ideas became popular among large numbers of Abbie Hoffman type young people who were trying to improve the sexual attitudes and behaviour of their societies.
Even today, the fact that, unlike other European countries and the US, state schools in Britain have individuality squashing uniforms, which stop people in those schools making friends and meeting sexual partners, as they find it harder to recognise fellow members of their respective musical and other tribes than people in American and other European state schools, indicates that Britain is still an authoritarian society which is closer to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, which forced their young people to wear Hitler Youth, League of German Girls, and Komsomol uniforms, than the US and other European countries are.
That is why Britain has a far worse racist violence problem than any other country in the EU (authoritarian people do not like people who are different to them). Pages 173 to 179 of this EU report reveal that there is several times more racist violence in Britain than there is in Germany for example, which is why British people making jokes about "Nazi" Germans amuse me:
http://fra.europa.eu/fraWebsite/material/pub/comparativestudy/CS-RV-main.pdf Authoritarianism is also why Britain has such a big school bullying problem (as bullies are authoritarians, they do not like people who are different to them, so they pick on racial and sexual minority people, overweight people, clever people, and so on). This 2007 UNICEF survey of child and adolescent happiness in 19 European countries, the US, and Canada, found that British children and adolescents were less happy than children and adolescents in any of the other countries, clearly partly because of the level of bullying in British schools (the table on page 25 reveals that British 11, 13, and 15 year olds were less likely to say that their peers were "kind and helpful" than their counterparts in any of the other countries which were surveyed):
http://www.unicef.org/media/files/ChildPovertyReport.pdf The gender apartheid in some British schools also makes Britain's sexual repression / authoritarianism problem worse of course.
So it is no wonder that so many leading British politicians have fascist links.
I discussed the BNP and UKIP leaderships' fascist and Holocaust denial links in these 9 articles for this anti-fascist website (putting my name into its search engine brings all of them up):
http://lancasteruaf.blogspot.com/search?q=roddy+newman In this article, then Labour MEP Richard Corbett discussed the UKIP leadership's fascist and Holocaust denial links, including an unofficial pact with the BNP which the BNP has admitted to the existence of:
http://www.richardcorbett.org.uk/assets/docs/briefing/theres-something-about-ukip.pdf Finally, in this article, I discussed the modern Conservative Party leadership's fascist links:
http://www.bristolanticutsalliance.org.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/cameron_links.pdf Because leading British politicians have fascist connections, it is also not surprising that the BNP possibly has more terrorist links than any other fascist party on the planet, as I showed in this article, "The BNP and terrorism", which also discussed British fascist terrorists who are not linked to the BNP:
http://lancasteruaf.blogspot.com/2009/11/bnp-and-terrorism.html As "The Sun" has always tried to benefit from the popularity of music in Britain, which buys more music per person than any other country in the world, by, for example, filling the centre pages of the first issue after Rupert Murdoch took over with a photo of a naked woman at the feet of the fully clothed Rolling Stones (note that on the Murdoch "Sun"'s first day, its women are just sex objects macho ideology was already evident, which is partly why Rupert Murdoch very definitely needs to set up "The Moon", so that after 42 years, News Corporation can prove that it is no longer macho, by not only dropping the yobbish tone of "Sun" articles, but also by publishing photos of half naked men as well as half naked women), it would be a good idea to use music in any campaigns to encourage people to boycott News Corporation products.
Appropriate songs which could be played while people gather signatures for surreal petitions, include: "News of the World", the 1978 number 27 hit by the Jam, which dismissed the rag as "just a comic, not much more"; a recently rereleased as a download, 1994 solo track from Queen drummer Roger Taylor's "Happiness?" CD, "Dear Mr. Murdoch", whose numerous scathing lines include: "They stain all they touch, they're real woman haters", "Dear Mr. Murdoch you're a dangerous chap, With your jingoist lingo we're drowning in crap", "And dear Mr. Murdoch what have you done?, You're not quite as nice as Attila the Hun" ; all of the 1977 Queen album "News of the World", which is not about a certain ex-newspaper, but which is appropriate music, because of the Roger Taylor song; the July 2011, also numerous scathing lines about Hillsborough, the Milly Dowler case, and corrupt police Billy Bragg song, "Never Buy The Sun", which has been released as a free download, and which describes Rupert Murdoch as "the Devil"; and a July 2011 Robots in Disguise track on their "Happiness v Sadness" CD, "Lies", which is also now available as a free download. Its again, numerous scathing lines include: "Why d'u have to deal in gossip?", "You lazy hack typing fiction into fact", "No I don't want my London Standard, Or the Sun or the Star or all your tabloid blah", and "And why are you obsessed with sex?"
Here are videos for all 4 of those songs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAXeUKPwBj4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pecFVzIfCNA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uWw7kuiCss http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjoMLA06fdk
Roddy Newman