Lieutenant Murdoch, At Your Service

Rupert Murdoch and Newscorp may be at the vanguard of the “press-as-propagandist” phenomenon but they are hardly its originators, and will be far from its final practitioners. Rupert Murdoch is a lieutenant in a cabal of global business interests that seek to maintain power and control over the world’s economy at any and all costs. The names that can be correctly associated with the apparatchik of this global junta are names like Rothschild, Koch, Mellon, the Republican and Democratic Leadership Councils, the US Chamber of Commerce and all the equivalents in all nations with an actual economy.

Think of Rupert Murdoch as the communications director for the global elite. That’s the correct picture. He doesn’t make the rules or the policy or even the propaganda. He does what he’s told to do by the people who enrich his media empire, the advertisers. And now they’re finally telling him to shut up.

James Murdoch, as has become painfully obvious, is no Rupert. Where the father is shrewd, the son is brash. Where the father is subtle, the son is crude. Where the father is calculating, the son is merely deceitful. James is a faint shadow of the man that built the empire. And his poor judgment has exposed the entire operation to scrutiny on a level never considered possible in the insulated ranks of the business elite.

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Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff on Countdown with Keith Olbermann

Damage control starts with cutting the bad actors loose, or at least shutting them down. That’s why Rupert is suddenly clamming up and James is no longer the heir-apparent at Newscorp, and why they will, along with Ms. Brooks, sheepishly appear before a committee of British MPs in the near future, something never considered possible before last week.

But this is far from the end of the story. The global cabal has contingency plans within contingency plans. If Newscorp loses its viability as a propaganda machine, other operations are already groomed and ready to step into the breach. But resuscitating the empire is preferable. Ergo, the moves to retire the Murdochs from Newscorp entirely must already be in motion.

Rupert is 80 years old. His most trusted advisors are all gone. Only the half-baked son remains. And nobody in the cabal can trust James to do the job without stepping on his own membership. The only way Newscorp can survive with any credibility intact culminates in the retirement of Rupert and the dismissal of his disappointing progeny. Otherwise, the global business junta has to start building a whole new Newscorp from the ground up. But there are others eagerly waiting in the wings.

Comcast would very much like to be the next Newscorp. Their recent acquisition of NBC Universal was a signal to the corporate plotocracy that they stand ready to serve the cause. Don’t be surprised to see Comcast enter a bid (with a partner) for the European satellite operation the Murdochs were just denied – BskyB, equivalent of DirecTV in the States. The business channel, CNBC, is already just as shrill and propagandistic as Fox News, and worse in many instances.

When Rick Santelli’s now-famous rant sparked the Tea Party astroturfing program, he was ranting on CNBC. Nobody who considers him or herself a “Tea Party Activist” watches CNBC with any kind of regularity. Most of the “Tea Partiers” live on government assistance and have no need for the kind of information offered on CNBC. The “grass roots” of the Tea Party being traceable to Rick Santelli on CNBC is proof in itself that astroturfing sparked the “movement.” Whether Tea Party activists realize it or not, they are following a pre-programmed agenda that can be traced to the highest echelons of corporate power, articulated into the business community on CNBC and then amplified on Murdoch’s Fox News.

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Gordon Brown lashes out in the House of Commons

What we are seeing from the British Parliament – and somewhat in the American Congress – is one long primal scream from the political establishment. They know they’ll go back to following orders soon enough. They’re merely using this window of opportunity to try to convince their constituencies to believe that they have spines. They don’t, they never did and they never will. But they know a good political opportunity when they see one.

The most cowardly act on Earth is to kick a person when that person is already down. There is no love for Rupert Murdoch or any of his minions going missing here, but it will be illuminating to see how many cowards pile on when the King is finally mortally wounded. While I don’t envy the position the Murdoch’s now find themselves in, it is a fate of their own devising and one they have well earned and truly deserve. At the moment, the many cuts haven’t been enough to bleed the beast, but there are many more cuts to come. Eventually, the beast will tire, and slow, and finally, drop. And when it does, there won’t be a friend of Rupert’s anywhere in the halls of power to stop the avalanche of cowards from piling on.

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• Rupert Murdoch sees £8billion BSkyB takeover bid collapse (mirror.co.uk)
• CNBC Host Indirectly Ties Rupert Murdoch Scandal To The Death Of Princess Diana (businessinsider.com)
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