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60 thoughts on “Why Murdoch is Not a Fit and Proper Person”

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  • Quark

    The Sun may have been premature in equating the atrocity in Norway with 9/11, but were they wrong in thus indicating that it was a false flag state terror op?

  • Suhayl Saadi

    We don’t know that – I mean that is was a flase flag operation – yet, Quark, do we? I too have speculated on this blog about this posibility (eg. CIA, etc.). Let’s see what transpires. The MSM will never acknowledge the existence of contemporary false flag operations in the West (they have no diffiulty suggsting that such ops occur in, say, Russia), even though there is widespread and solid evidence that such ops have occured in the West for decades.

  • Quark

    “We don’t know that – I mean that is was a flase flag operation ”
    I wasn’t speculating. I thought the Sun was. Or are you saying that 9/11 really was the work of 18 Arabs who didn’t know how to fly?

  • mark_golding

    John Goss and Mary hats off for action.
    .
    From the Sun March 8th 2011:
    .
    PREVIOUSLY unseen video of the 9/11 attacks has been leaked on the internet.

    Audio Snippet:
    .
    “The whole tower, it’s gone, holy crap, they knocked the whole fricking thing down.”
    Another cop says bewilderedly: “How could it go down?”
    .
    Footer:
    .
    It is not known who leaked the video on to the web.
    .
    Hmmmm = get the contradiction – read the psychology?? Spread the message loud and clear.

  • angrysoba

    “Or are you saying that 9/11 really was the work of 18 Arabs who didn’t know how to fly?”
    .
    Nobody at all says that Quark. It was 19 Arabs and at least four of them did know how to fly. I know that some people like yourself guffaw at the very idea of Arabs flying planes but that’s because you’re a racist cock.

  • angrysoba

    “As a conspiraloon I really have no words”
    .
    Wish that were true.
    .
    “I cannot convey my feelings.”
    .
    Now that is true.
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    “Everything is off the scale.”
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    Probably meaningless.
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    “I am filled with ire.”
    .
    Only if that is correctly spelt “BS”.

  • angrysoba

    “Hateful lying racist propaganda.”
    .
    I don’t understand what is racist about the Sun’s headline. It may be wrong but that is hardly the same as “racist”.

  • Suhayl Saadi

    Angrysoba:

    The Sun’s headline cleverly, but to me very obviously, stokes anti-Muslim feelings by prematurely and at high volume, attributing the recent atrocity to ‘Al Qaeda’, associating it immediately with ‘9/11’, etc. They may not be saying “Look! Here’s what to think, here’s the default position: A bunch of Dastardly Muslim Ragheads did this!”, but in the current climate, that is message conveyed by the headline. It may not contravene any laws – hence my earlier frustration, but in some ways, it is worse, actually, than being straighforwardly racist/ bigoted, etc. I think ethically it is wrong.
    .
    In essence, it is similar to those who talk about “genocide” in the context of immigration and then refuse to acknowledge the significance and consequences of their position and rhetoric.
    .
    These are not matters of pure philosophy or logic in that sense, nor need they be constrained by matters of dictionary definition. Words are extremely malleable, their meanings change constantly depending on the context of their use. These are matters, really, of what is called ‘PR’, which really is simply a modern term for propaganda.
    .
    Because of the pattern of immigration, in Europe, it is likely that the vision of a ‘Muslim’ is that of a brown-skinned person and of course, globally, the majority of Muslims are brown-skinned. Now, in the past, racist publications used to refer to ‘the Jews’ as ‘Cosmopolitans’. Everyone knew what it meant and because of prior propaganda conditioning, it conjured up stereotypical pictures of swarthy, hook-nosed, money-grabbing ‘Shylocks’, basically. Strictly-speaking, linguistically, philosophically, etc., they were not being racist. ‘Cosmopolitan’ is not itself a racist word (unlike, say, ‘nigger’). But really, politically and in the public sphere, they knew perfectly well what they were doing and what they were doing was racist. Such material, coming as it did on a background of 1500 years of Anti-Semitism in Europe, stoked anti-Semitism to the point where Kristallnacht and the Holocaust became possible.
    .

    So, in my view, in this headline, in this context, The Sun was being racist. It would not stand up in court, damn it, I realise that, but we not concerned here with legal issues, we are concerned with matters of public discourse and propaganda. The Sun is visceral, but clever, propaganda. And unless people confront and oppose it on every level, it will continue to instill its poisonous propaganda into the public consciousness and one day someone of unstable personality will pick up a gun and…
    .
    Such things have real consequences. That is why words are critical.
    .
    That, surely, is why we blog/post here, because words are critical.
    .
    All good wishes to you, btw.

  • Jaded.

    Yes, well done for putting Soba in his place Suhayl. He often shoots wide of the mark. Try and go easy on him though as, i’m not sure if you were aware, he did seem to be having a bit of a meltdown on the boards earlier in the year. 🙁

  • Canspeccy

    “The Sun’s headline cleverly, but to me very obviously, stokes anti-Muslim feelings by prematurely and at high volume, attributing the recent atrocity to ‘Al Qaeda’, associating it immediately with ’9/11′, etc.”
    *
    Twaddle.

  • Suhayl Saadi

    Ah, here, at last, is ‘The Laughing Policeman’. He would say that, wouldn’t he? He should be ashamed of himself. Stoking Far Right hate ideology on the web is precisely what appears to have contributed to this act of horror. And all he writes is the equivalent of ‘Look what a reasonable gentleman that nice Mr Nicholas Griffin of the BNP is; he believes in everything you believe! Why, you could go and vote for him and save the British Race from genocide!” There ought to be some humility and considerable shame.

  • Canspeccy

    Re:

    “‘The Sun’s headline cleverly, but to me very obviously, stokes anti-Muslim feelings by prematurely and at high volume, attributing the recent atrocity to ‘Al Qaeda’, associating it immediately with ’9/11′, etc.’
    *
    Twaddle.”
    *
    Well probably correct, actually. The Sun’s staff were likely on autopilot when they wrote that nonsense.
    *
    But the big question is what motivated this atrocity.
    *
    My initial reaction was that is must be a psyop intended to discredit entirely legitimate opponents of mass immigration.
    *
    Now, I am not so sure! It seems at least conceivable that Breivik is more or less entirely sane and that his action was the shot intended to launch a civil war between the crusaders and multi-culturalists.

  • angrysoba

    Suhayl: “The Sun’s headline cleverly, but to me very obviously, stokes anti-Muslim feelings by prematurely and at high volume, attributing the recent atrocity to ‘Al Qaeda’, associating it immediately with ’9/11′, etc.”
    .
    I think the Sun’s headline was trite and boring and – as we have seen – it was not at all clever but I think it was more sensationalist than racist. It was basically the same deal as when the Oklahoma bombing was initially thought to have been an attack by Islamic fundamentalists. In fact, I think there was a newspaper headline emblazoned above a picture of a firefighter holding a baby which screamed, “In the name of Islam!” or “In the Name of Allah!” I’ve been trying to find the headline somewhere. I seem to recall it may have been on the New York Post which was and still is a Murdoch paper.
    .
    I don’t agree with your analysis here, though. I could of course be wrong and there may well be racist intent involved with this headline but I think that it would be wrong to assume that the headline is anymore racist than when some boring hack writes, “This is X’s Waterloo” or “This is X’s Watergate”.
    .
    I do agree that there is something such as dog-whistle racism which is intended to be deniable and in fact one particular word we used before such as “niggardly” is probably used by a lot of people with an inner smirk because they are trying to be provocative. Same with “genocide in Leicester” but in that case there was more to it given that the proponent of the genocide in Leicester theory kept slipping up by making it obvious he was really talking about the colour of people’s skin.
    .
    Anyway, the Sun is trash and it may well be worth opposing at all times but let’s at least keep our feet on the ground when we do so.
    .
    A small bit of pedantry here:
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    “Because of the pattern of immigration, in Europe, it is likely that the vision of a ‘Muslim’ is that of a brown-skinned person and of course, globally, the majority of Muslims are brown-skinned. Now, in the past, racist publications used to refer to ‘the Jews’ as ‘Cosmopolitans’. Everyone knew what it meant and because of prior propaganda conditioning, it conjured up stereotypical pictures of swarthy, hook-nosed, money-grabbing ‘Shylocks’, basically. Strictly-speaking, linguistically, philosophically, etc., they were not being racist. ‘Cosmopolitan’ is not itself a racist word (unlike, say, ‘nigger’). But really, politically and in the public sphere, they knew perfectly well what they were doing and what they were doing was racist. Such material, coming as it did on a background of 1500 years of Anti-Semitism in Europe, stoked anti-Semitism to the point where Kristallnacht and the Holocaust became possible.”
    .
    As far as I understand, the word “cosmopolitan” was mostly used by Stalin (combined with “rootless”) as a “dog-whistle” racist term during his final days when he started believing in a plot by his doctors to kill him. He was an old man and suspicious that he seemed to be getting sicker in the way that paranoid people often do. But obviously this couldn’t have led to Kristallnacht and the Holocaust as those events had already happened.

  • Suhayl Saadi

    Thanks for the nuanced analysis, angrysoba and for the clarification re. the use off the term, ‘cosmopolitan’ – yes I’d forgotten the precise usage wrt Stalin, the USSR, etc. ‘Dog-whistle racist term’ is a excellent phrase – I’m sure I shall use it in the future! Good point about ‘Leicester’, too. Yes, absolutely.
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    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rootless_cosmopolitan
    .
    Interestingly – a slight deviation here – I was reminded the other day that Napoleon liberated the Jews of Europe from ghettos, gave them equal rights, etc. And so, when the Russian armies were fighting the Napoleonic armies and trying to wrest back the Russian Empire’s then-fiefdom of Poland, one of the major propaganda anti-Napoleonic rallying cries was basically ‘Napoleon as Jew-Lover’.

    ” The first to object against the creation of the Great Sanhedrin was the Russian Czar Alexander I. He vehemently denounced the liberties given to the Jews and went further still, demanding that the Orthodox Church protest against Napoleon’s tolerant religious policy. He referred to the Emperor in a proclamation as “the Anti Christ” and the “Enemy of God”. ” (from Wikipedia).
    .

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_and_the_Jews
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    Alexander I was once Napoleon’s friend and relatively liberal czar, but he changed.
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    I have to say that I think that 200 years on, in Anglophonia, in the popular discourses of history, we continue to receive overwhelmingly negative views of Napoleon, basically suggesting that ‘Napoleon was Hitler’. This, of course, is utterly, grossly inaccurate.
    .
    Sorry for the slight deviation. Matters of Europe and minorities, etc., I suppose, though, so in some way still relevant!

  • angrysoba

    I think part of Napoleon’s association with Hitler is one that Hitler himself cultivated. Napoleon would be spinning in his matchbox, I am sure, if he had known someone like Hitler would come to try and emulate him.
    .
    An interesting point made by Dairmaird Macculloch is that after the viscious and really bloody anti-clericalism of the French Revolution, Napoleon brought back a tolerance of religion not because he had much need for it himself but because he knew how much others had a need for it. As well as extending the revolutionary concepts of liberty to Jews he also signed a Concordat with the Pope to win the favour of Catholics. Hitler of course also signed a Concordat with the Pope.
    .
    I tend to think that instead of powerful people such as Cromwell, Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin manipulating people through religion rather it is that they know the powerful effect religion has on those they want the allegiance of and therefore they give lip service to it.
    .
    Thanks for the interesting post. I didn’t know about Alexander I. I’ll look into him a bit more. Cheers.

  • angrysoba

    “Angrysoba, intelligent leaders are careful not to make themselves enemies of powerful religions.”
    .
    Probably. Making oneself an enemy of any powerful ideology which has a hold on the people you wish to govern is probably a bad idea if you can instead co-opt it. I’m sure that is bog-standard Machiavellianism, and religion need not be a special case, although Mao did okay.

  • Suhayl Saadi

    Also, interestingly, it turns out that Napoleon was 5 ‘ 7”, not 4′ 11’. In the early C19th, 5′ 7” was actually a good height. He sometimes appeared small partly because the French Imperial Guards had to be at least 5′ 8” and they wore tall, bearskin hats. The British also used this false caricature as a propaganda weapon to ridicule and belittle him.
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    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Guard_%28Napoleon_I%29

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    “The British Tory press sometimes depicted Napoleon as much smaller than average height, and this image persists. Confusion about his height also results from the difference between the French pouce and British inch—2.71 and 2.54 cm respectively; he was about 1.7 metres (5 ft 7 in) tall, average height for the period.” from Wikipedia. So then, Rupert Murdoch is even older than he claims!
    .
    So, in a strange historical roundel, we are once again on-topic, eh? “The British Tory Press”, well, there they are again, how utterly familiar. There still here, crushing their lies like dried flowers into our brains, the people who brought us Peterloo…

  • TFS

    Didn’t James Murdoch claim that he payed out £750,000 becuase under advisement they realised they would loose at court?

    Does this mean by extroplation, that all those cases in America that were settled by the Murdoch empire, were similarly settled because the cases all had merit?

    TFS

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