How Rupert Murdoch Conned British MPs By Playing The Sad, Pathetic Old Man Card

By Darryl Mason

Rupert Murdoch, at first, refused to appear before British MPs to answer questions about News International's involvement in phone hacking, spying, blackmail and police corruption. But so furious was the reaction of the British public he quickly caved and announced he would appear.

And so he did.

MPs, like Tom Watson, who had been pursuing Murdoch to come clean for years about the cruel criminality of his News Of The World, were wired as the clock ticked down to Rupert Murdoch's appearance, alongside his son James. Tens of millions tuned in around the world, this was it, the Sun King was on the ropes, he was going to get it in the face with both barrels.

But then Rupert pulled off an extraordinary piece of acting. He shambled into the room, head down, slouched gingerly into his chair and struggled to answer questions, or even hear them

His first words to MPs :



Within seconds, the mood of the entire room changed. This wasn't a monster, this was a very old man, sad and sorry, apparently perhaps even a sick old man, as harmless and innocent as their own granpas. How could these MPs beat up on someone so old, so sad, so "humble", so helpless?

They couldn't, and they didn't.



But once Rupert knew he'd conned the room, he was somehow able to to recover all his faculties and defiant verve, and finished the appearance by reading out a statement written by one of the world's leading public relations companies. He might as well have simply said, "Fuck You Very Much."



So how do we know Rupert Murdoch was faking the I'm A Sad Old Man, Don't Be Mean To Me persona?

Because barely a few weeks earlier, he'd given a lively interview with his wife Wendi on how they'd met and fallen in love :



It's like a decade had passed between the above interview and his Struggling To Answer Questions performance in London. It wasn't even 3 weeks.

Within two days of his 'answers' to British MPs, Rupert Murdoch was private-jetting back to New York City, while thousands of British victims of crime waited for phone calls from police to learn if they, too, had had their grief and privacy, their most intimate moments, violated by Murdoch's goons.

Well played, you old bastard. Well played.

The Rupert Murdoch Hacking And Spying Scandal has given competing media companies, independent news agencies, bloggers and tweeters enormous opportunities to feast on, mock and profit from Murdoch's legal problems. Now it's time for advertising agencies to get their share of the cash-in from the fiasco.

A German lingerie company called Blush is one of the first out of the gate, not only teasing Rupert and James Murdoch directly with their pitch lines, but also reworking the iconic red and white logo of the now defunct News Of The World paper :





More Here

One of the reasons I love Twitter is it forces people to say what they want to say in as few a words as possible. Sure they can tease with a line and then link to a 1000 word essay, but it's much better when the truth of the matter is nailed then and there in one or two tweets.

Like this double whammy.


Whereas in his first 3 years....


Nailed it.

Ex-Murdoch Editor Claims Phone Of Dead Girl Hacked Only To Help Police

One of the most bizarre explanations for journalists spying on victims of crime and why Rupert Murdoch journalists at the News Of The World paid investigators to hack into the phone of a missing 13 year girl, of course it comes from a former editor of Murdoch's The Sun :

...there is a valid, albeit arguable, journalistic justification for it. If it is true, as alleged, that private detectives deleted some messages in order to allow new ones in, then any new message might have carried a clue as to the child's whereabouts and indeed our increasingly beleaguered police might have thought of this for themselves. The NoW showed some initiative here – it is only a pity they did so in such an insensitive and self-interested fashion, failing entirely to acknowledge the distress this could (and did) cause the Dowler family.

These people are fucking insane.

The worst famine the world has seen in decades is killing tens of thousands of people in Somalia. So Rupert Murdoch's The London Times decides this human tragedy is as good a means as any to try and steer attention away the ongoing hacking and spying scandal that continues to engulf the Times parent company.



"I've had a bellyful of phone hacking."

I can't recall the last time I saw something so repulsive in a mainstream newspaper. And it certainly didn't have the presumed, desired effect. Ourage and disgust is spreading fast about the cartoon, and I'm guessing someone in News International will have to apologise for this as well.

Not Rupert Murdoch, of course. According to him, per his recent testimony to British MPs, he knows nothing about anything that shows up in his newspapers.

Absolutely cold-blooded.

The Many Sticky Threads That Make Up The Tangled Web Of Rupert Murdoch's Spying And Corruption

Blech :



The Murdoch Hacking, Spying And Corruption Scandal is complicated, and unless you have spent hours churning through the dozen or more articles posted everyday by the Guardian and the New York Times in the past two weeks, it's hard to keep up and get a good overview.

The Columbia Journalism Review provides exactly the overview you need :

For starters, executives, editors, and reporters at News Corp.’s UK unit have: bribed the police; illegally hacked thousands of people’s phones, including a 13-year-old then-missing murder victim’s; tampered with evidence while the victim was still missing. They interfered with a second murder investigation; misled police and Parliament, repeatedly, when questioned about these activities; knowingly employed an ax-murder suspect who had been convicted and imprisoned for planting cocaine on an innocent woman in a divorce case; paid millions of dollars to victims explicitly in exchange for their silence; paid large sums to former employees after they had been convicted of crimes committed at the behest of News Corporation employees; continued to pay for convicted former employees’ high-powered lawyers.

It has further been revealed that a senior News International executive deleted millions of emails in an “apparent attempt to obstruct Scotland Yard’s inquiry”; hid the contents of a top journalist’s desk after he was arrested; stuffed documents into trash bags and took them away as detectives came into the office to investigate; put the scandal’s lead police investigator, whose inquiry was a bad joke, on the News Corp. payroll with a plum columnist job.

Plenty More Here

Rupert Murdoch has jetted out of London, no doubt laughing at how easily he has escaped the full force of the law, so far.

But police investigations are now underway into the culpability of his corporation in the UK and the US.

His day in court may well come, if he lives that long.

Rupert Murdoch spent a small fortune on a PR company to make him come across as helpless, humble and innocent as possible, during his time before British MPs to answer questions on illegal spying and outrageous invasions of personal privacy. Or not answer them.

Barbra Walters buys the fantasy, completely :



Unbelievable.

9/11? What's That?

Murdoch Media Is The Real Victim Of This Hacking Scandal

Two utterly mind-blowing, brain-boggling moments from Rupert Murdoch's American propaganda channel, in the same week.

What happened on September 11, 2001?



People don't realise that Rupert Murdoch is the real victim in his own International Spying And Intelligence Gathering Scandal. Or something :



Well done, Fox News. Well done.

Starring Steve Coogan As Steve Coogan

A trailer for the first movie based on the Rupert Murdoch HackGate scandal has been released, and it's got an all star cast :



I really would love to see UK Labour leader Ed Miliband played by Rowan Atkinson.

Amazing, isn't it? The biggest story of media, corporate, political and police corruption in recent history (it's already bigger than Watergate), and Rupert Murdoch can't turn a buck off any of the plethora of books, movies and TV shows that will flow from it.

He must be seething.

The new show from the creators and actors of Trailer Park Boys looks utterly demented. As we hoped :

Rupert Murdoch's Massive Spying Operations Finally Exposed

Police Paid By Murdoch Execs To Spy On Celebrities, Politicians And Terror Victims

Murdoch Faces Spying And Hacking Probe In US


Rupert Murdoch cries for himself, not his victims

By Darryl Mason

It's been a long time coming, but the world is finally learning that media mogul Rupert Murdoch has spent at least a decade funding one of the biggest corporate spying and intelligence gathering operations in history.

It's being called 'Murdoch Hacking Scandal' but spying and intelligence gathering is exactly what it was. Murdoch's attack dogs even hacked the phones of the police investigating them, or so claim detectives.

The targets of Murdoch's spying were celebrities, politicians, the British police, Scotland Yard detectives and the families of terrorism and murder victims. And that's just for starters.

More than 3400 people, were targeted by Murdoch journalists and private detectives in the UK.

If you haven't been following this sickening story on the most intrusive of privacy violations, here's a round up :



In October, 2010, Rupert Murdoch denied any knowledge of the spying and hacking that made him even richer. This is what he said to a shareholders meeting that month :

"We have very, very strict rules. There was one incident more than five years ago … the person who bought the bugged conversation was immediately fired. If anything was to come to light, and we have challenged those people who have made allegations to provide evidence … we would take immediate action"

At the time of that comment by Murdoch, his son James Murdoch was paying off victims of their phone hacking to maintain their silence. Some received Shut The Fuck Up payments of more than $US1 million. And Rupert knew nothing about this? Sounds highly, highly unlikely.

Now the truth is getting out, thanks to the dogged pursuit by UK Guardian journalist Nick Davies, Rupert Murdoch remains cold and calculating in his response to the scandal, and the trauma suffered by the victims of this spying and hacking :



Now the police accused of illegally taking money from Murdoch journalists and executives are facing questions from British parliamentary committees, and Rupert Murdoch himself, along with his son James Murdoch and News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks, are to face politicians next week. Incredibly, this scandal may end with the jailing of James Murdoch or Rebekah Brooks, or both of them.

Here's an hilarious video of Scotland Yard deputy commissioner denying he took money from journalists or executives at Rupert Murdoch's British newspaper empire :



Protesting just a little too much there?

The Murdoch Spying Scandal is now hitting Murdoch where it really hurts, wiping more than $7 billion of the value of News Corp stock in the US, and billions more in stock value losses in Australia and the UK.

So what about Murdoch's media operations in Australia and the United States, including Fox News?

Do they, like his British journalists, hack the phones and financial records of civilians and politicians and pay police for information and protection from prosecution? It seems hard to believe that the 'news gathering' techniques so entrenched in Murdoch's British media, and other British tabloids, are not endemic across his empire.

In the meantime, Rupert and James Murdoch are now considering which of their newspapers to close next. His flagship print newspaper The Australian is on the block for the chop within two years, but there will be many more newspaper closures, and mass journalist sackings, to come.

Newspapers are how Murdoch has controlled politicians for decades, but all that is over now, as the minor sex and corruption scandals that they would have once been so ashamed to have blasted across a Murdoch front page pale in comparison to the mind-boggling levels of spying, corruption and blackmail involving chief Murdoch executives.

There is so much more to come....


Screengrab from front page of British tabloid The Daily Mirror


UPDATE : Well, Rupert Murdoch is totally fucked now :

A powerful U.S. senator with jurisdiction over privacy and telecommunications issues late Tuesday urged regulators to look into whether News. Corp. had violated any U.S. laws when its British journalists gained unauthorized access to several individuals' voice mails to pursue stories.

"The reported hacking by News Corporation newspapers against a range of individuals--including children--is offensive and a serious breach of journalistic ethics," said Senate Commerce, Science & Transportation Chairman John D. Rockefeller in a press statement.

"This raises serious questions about whether the company has broken U.S. law, and I encourage the appropriate agencies to investigate to ensure that Americans have not had their privacy violated," he added. "I am concerned that the admitted phone hacking in London by the News Corp. may have extended to 9/11 victims or other Americans. If they did, the consequences will be severe."

It couldn't happen to a more miserable, vile, corrupt and corrupting scumbag.


How Your New Reality Covered The Start Of This Extraordinary Story In 2009

July 2009 : Murdoch Media Could Pay Out Billions For Spying On Cops, Politicians And Celebrities

July 2009 : Scotland Yard Announces New Inquiry Into Murdoch Spying Scandal And Then Abandons It Only A Few Hours Later

September 2009 : Rupert Murdoch Doesn't Love Newspapers, He Can't Wait To Close Them All Down, "It's Going To Be Great!"

And Just To Prove Rupert Murdoch Is Behind Some Of The Worst Lies Of Climate Change Catastrophe......Murdoch Media Blames '300,00 Global Warming Deaths A Year' On Obese People

'Fox News' Announces President Obama Has Been Shot And Killed

By Darryl Mason

Ten hours, that's 10 fucking hours, after a series of fake tweets announcing President Barack Obama had been shot twice in a restaurant and subsequently died from the wounds, this shocking (but fake) news remains the July 4 reality for millions of Americans now waking up to see this tweet RTed by friends who truly believe Fox News Politics is telling the truth :



According to Twitter, Fox News Politics is a verified account :



The full series of tweets announcing Obama is dead and wishing the best of luck to US President Biden (**shiver**) :



Millions of Americans are being left shocked and horrified simply by checking their Twitter streams on their phones, before they turn on the news, or look at a news website.

Talk about a July 4 mindfuck.

You're a mainstream news organisation, one of your popular Twitter streams has been hacked and used to announce Barack Obama has been shot and killed. A shocking, jarring thing to read, even if you already know @FoxNewsPolitics has been hacked. And yet, ten fucking hours drift by and the tweets remain online, and are now being retweeted hundreds of times to an audience of millions.

At least this gives Fox News hosts the opportunity to "What if?" the scenario where President Obama is assassinated. What sort of president would Joe Biden really make?

All that horror talk.

UPDATE : While the 'Obama Assassinated' tweets are still live on Twitter, Fox News issued this statement :

FoxNews.com's Twitter feed for political news, FoxNewspolitics, was hacked early Monday morning.

Hackers sent out several malicious and false tweets claiming that President Obama had been assassinated. Those reports are incorrect, of course, and the president is spending the July 4 holiday with his family.

The hacking is being investigated, and FoxNews.com regrets any distress the false tweets may have created.

The sudden avalanche of tweets, phone calls and blog comments with the words "Obama" and "killed" and "assassinated" in them, generated by this piece of cliched hackery, are really going to screw up Echelon.

Happy July 4.