On Oct. 14, the Wall Street Journal, in reporting on the main sentence in the Galleon insider information case, ran a series of five photographs of what were described as "corporate criminals" with their sentences attached, from Bernard Madoff (150 years), down even unto me at six and a half years. On July 18, 2010, the same newspaper ran an extensive lead editorial, headlined "Conrad Black's Revenge," in which it recorded that the four surviving counts against me (of an original 17) had been unanimously vacated by the Supreme Court, the principle prosecuting statute (the much abused concept of Honest Services), had been struck down and rewritten, and the Journal graciously apologized to me for having underestimated the merits of my defense. The high court excoriated the panel of the Seventh Circuit of the Circuit Court of Appeal from which I petitioned for, among other transgressions, the "infirmity of invented law." My cameo appearance in the Journal's rogues' gallery on Friday pretended that the original sentence had never been assailed or reduced.
In the perverse American manner, the Supreme Court remanded the vacated counts back to the appellate court to assess the gravity of its own errors. This unrigorous and self-interested process produced a spurious but not unexpected resurrection of one fraud count and a finding of obstruction of justice. The fraud count involved a payment to me of $285,000. That it was undisputed in the evidence had been approved by the executive committee and board of directors of the company, and the obstruction was simply nonsense, and was not pursued in the local jurisdiction (Canada) as a violation of a document retention order, and it had no monetary significance. It was accurately described by a former deputy solicitor general of the United States at the Seventh Circuit, as "in 45 years of practice the feeblest case of obstruction of justice I have seen."
It was this nonsense, maliciously retrieved to plaster a fig-leaf of plausibility on a misconceived and failed prosecution (that originally sought my imprisonment for life and fines and restitution of $140 million), on the destruction of which the Journal had so generously congratulated me 15 months before, that was invoked to put me in the company of Mr. Madoff and the others.
I have written elsewhere of my protracted legal travails and the remaining entrails of them will be dealt with satisfactorily in the appropriate courts, (largely, fortunately, out of this country). What is noteworthy in this dishonest donkey kick from the Wall Street Journal is what it tells us about the controlling shareholder of that newspaper, the now, to return a frequently proffered favor he served on me, thoroughly disgraced and in his own admission, "humbled," Rupert Murdoch.
As I have often written before, he is probably the greatest media-owner in history, and his achievements in becoming the tabloid leader in London, in cracking the egregious Luddite print unions there, in breaking the triopoly of American television networks, promoting vertical integration with television outlets and film production, and his pioneering breakthroughs in satellite television worldwide, are Napoleonic in boldness of concept and skill of execution. And no one has been more vocal or consistent than I in saluting them.
I competed with Murdoch, successful and quite cordially, in Britain for 15 years when we had the Telegraph newspapers, and for a time in Australia. Our relations and those of our wives were always quite convivial. I never joined the chorus of those who objected to his newspaper cover-price cutting in London; as a capitalist I thought he had every right to cut prices if he wished. And I publicly supported him when he almost went bankrupt 20 years ago, denouncing his critics as motivated by envy.
I was naturally disappointed when, as my own legal problems arose eight years ago, his vast media organization swung into vitriolic defamatory mode, endlessly accusing me of crimes years before any were alleged. When revelations of his own sleazy behavior came to light in the hacking scandals in England, it also came out, confirming what I had heard from my own sources, and which I would have known from my knowledge of how his company is run, that Murdoch had personally intervened to make reporting on my problems nastier (despite having assured me in writing that he would try to prevent excesses). My Madoffization last week almost certainly has the same exalted source.
In earlier times, whenever there had been anything even slightly unfavorable about him in any of our publications, he had called me to object, or had his British managing director call my co-chief executive at the Telegraph. Even as he was stoking up the media lynch mob against me, he told his latest biographer, Michael Wolff, as he told others, of his high regard for me as a publisher, as if his febrile libels and fabrications were the coincidental, spontaneous antics of autonomous underlings.
Now Muroch's company has been stripped naked as the lawless hypocritical organization it has long been; its employees think nothing of trolling for the private conversations of the British royal family, bribing the police, meddling in criminal investigations, tampering with the cell phone of a kidnap victim, and engaging in wholesale industrial espionage.
For decades, Murdoch has smeared, lied, double-crossed his political benefactors, including Jimmy Carter, Margaret Thatcher, John Major, a long sequence of Australian leaders, and the democratic forces of Hong Kong.
When the extent of his skullduggery finally oozed out, sluggish and filthy, including the details of the British government's dotage on him, this summer, Murdoch's old possum routine didn't play as convincingly as it had in its many previous auditions, when he purported to be contrite over the shortcomings of errant employees. Bumbling into a parliamentary hearing in London, supported on each arm like a centenarian semi-cadaver, mumbling about humility, trying to represent News Corporation's board as independent when it is public corporate America's most docile board of directors and is composed entirely of hacks, retainers, and ex-employees; scrambling and whimpering and paying millions to victims of his outrages; putting his name on a Journal op-ed piece about education last Saturday; it's all of a piece and none of it resonates anymore. In bygone days, he somehow carried off sprawling in a black costume on a bed in a glossy and ruminating about being an "ambassador to Joe Six Pack," a champion of the little guy, and a spiritual person contemplating the consolations of Catholicism. At its most imaginative, it was a passably imaginative imposture.
My admiration for his boldness and acumen and our previous 25 years of more than civil relations make it unpleasant, despite his unspeakable assault on me, to have to conclude that he is, in my personal belief, a psychopath. Behind his nondescript personality lurks a repressed, destructive malice. His is, and has been proved to be, in some measure, a criminal organization. This, apart from weaknesses of leadership, was always the greatest vulnerability of post-Reagan America's conservatism: its reliance on a man who would put anyone over the side and hoist any colors when the wind changed. Now that the great defamer is a tottering, cowardly supplicant and a prime candidate for criminal prosecution on at least two continents, no one should count on his continued support for more than 24 hours at a time.
For my part, I am already suing his company in Canada for the most artlessly libelous book since The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, by the defamer Tom Bower. In the extreme winter of his days, Rupert Murdoch's failing hands have dropped the mask; he is a malignant force and it would be a good thing for the world to be done with him.
In his 1956 book The Power Elite the American sociologist C. Wright Mills sketched the difference between a 'public society' and a 'mass society'. He thought this difference could best be understood in terms of the characteristic forms of communication found in each.
In a public society the archetype of communication is a conversation between equals where 'virtually as many people express opinions as receive them' and 'communications are so organised that there is a chance immediately and effectively to answer any opinion expressed in public'. A public, as opposed to a mass, can translate its opinions into effective action. It can change policy as its opinions change. In a mass society, on the other hand, the most characteristic form of communication is a broadcast that delivers one unanswerable voice to millions of quiet and attentive listeners. There is little or no scope for individuals to answer back to the messages they receive. There is certainly no way that the inhabitants of a mass society can translate their opinions into politically effective action.
For much of the time after Mills wrote The Power Elite the trend in the West was towards greater massification. In America, the formal and informal publics that convened to discuss matters of shared concern were, to some extent, supplanted by televised and heavily stage-managed events - the studio audience replaced the town hall meeting. In Britain, political parties, which once provided at least some scope for public discussion in Mills’ sense, became increasingly centralised. Party conferences ceased to be venues for debates about policy and active membership dwindled.
More generally, politicians in both country adopted techniques and personnel from the entertainment and public relations industry and aspired to create the illusion of public engagement while suppressing its potential to disrupt elite decision-making. For a while it seemed that new technologies would only provide them with new resources for manipulation and surveillance.
But there are now encouraging signs that a public society is reviving. In part this is because modern communications technology has made it possible for at least some groups to communicate without relying on broadcast and print media. Social network sites have made citizens audible and visible to one another. In the run up to the occupation of the City of London, for example, thousands of people used a Facebook page to express their intention to show up. Occupations in hundreds of other cities have taken advantage of social media in similar ways.
To a much greater extent, though, something like a public society is emerging because the major media no longer seem able to describe the world accurately.
Social media is for networking, but then some can even use this as a mischief and attempt to create hatred among communities which in turn may have lead to civil unrest.
This is exactly what has happened in Hyderabad, where some anti-social elements studying in St.Francis Xavier Degree College at Kachiguda, posted some inflammatory photos of Holy Kaaba on the Facebook.
The photos clearly desecrated the modesty of Holy Kaaba, the most revered place of worship for the followers of the Islamic faith.
It was timely action by some social activist and an upright police officer that defused the situation which had all the ingredients to flare up into a full fledged communal riot.
The Muslim students of the St.Francis Xavier Degree College brought this matter to the notice of the Amjed Ullah Khan, Corporator 35-Azampura Division, Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC).
Mr Khan immediately lodged a complaint against such activities going on the Facebook, at the police station Kachiguda, Hyderabad.
In his complaint Mr. Khan urged the police to take immediate action against those students who had indulged in hate monger at the social media site, that has the third largest population in the word after China and India.
Mr Khan has also urged action against the management of the degree college for having such kind of anti social elements as its students.
After registering the complaint, the police swung into action and visited the college along with Mr.Khan. They were quickly able to identify the anti-social elements of the college as Abhishek Totla, Neeraj Jhawar, Deepesh Agarwal. The trio was arrested on the charges of trying to create hatred among the communities.
The management of the college cooperated with the police, fearing the men in uniform. The college Principal Mr. Bhujang Rao immediately issued Transfer Certificate to the students and handed them over to the police.
The prompt action of the Inspector of Police at the Kachiguda police station should be appreciated. It is due to his prompt action of going to the college, identifying the real culprits and arresting them defused a highly volatile situation in Muslim dominated city like Hyderabad.
This case serves as an example for all those who take for granted the social media sites as a play field and think can get away with what ever they may like to do there.
This case also sends out a strong message to the users of the social media that their anti social activities on such sites could be registered as a cognizable offence.
The ongoing financial crisis in particular has done huge damage to the prestige of the major news operations. They didn’t see it coming. They misunderstood it when it happened. And they still struggle to state the blindingly obvious, that the private credit system has failed, and that banking must now come under effective democratic control.
Taib Mahmud’s $5million dollar a year ‘Cyber-war Campaign’ has conceded a humiliating defeat, with the final demise of the site ‘Sarawak Reports’.
Sarawak Reports was part of a vicious network of internet sites, set up by the crooked UK-based production FBC Media, in a hired attempt to undermine this blog and to attack the opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim.
By adopting a virtually identical name to our own, FBC clearly hoped they could confuse web-surfers into reading their pro-Taib propaganda, instead of our research into Taib’s 30 years of corrupt government.
However, there is little evidence that readers were in fact fooled but this costly exercise. The site never dared to publish the handful of comments it received for its stories, which were little more than dreary ‘puff pieces’ praising Taib’s ‘progress and development’ policies.
The site also carried a permanent section devoted to attacking the Editor of Sarawak Report and family members.
- Black propaganda – who did they think they were kidding?
Collapse of Cyber-war campaign follows exposure of FBC Media
After Sarawak Report started to investigate, the whole truth behind the scandal came out. We showed how FBC Media had commissioned a team of Republican bloggers in the States to write a series of attacking articles in a supposedly non-sponsored website called New Ledger.
- First put it on the USA’s New Ledger to give it credibility – then place it in Sarawak Reports!
These articles, by unheard of Americans, were then reproduced in Sarawak Reports as if they represented influential thinking in the US.
Worse, we discovered a similar campaign was being carried out by the very same people against the opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim, and this time the person who commissioned the attacks was the PM himself, Najib Razak!
The scurrilous articles about Anwar, written for New Ledger by non-entities in the States, were being reproduced in a separate blog called Malaysia Watcher. Just this week the PM was forced to admit that his office has spent RM 84 million on such campaigns with FBC Media in just three years!
We can now report that Malaysia Watcher is likewise no longer accessible.
Who is Rachel Motte? She stopped writing for New Ledger after we exposed the FBC-lined campaign
Furthermore, since our exposes in late July, New Ledger has ceased publishing any stories about Malaysia, Sarawak Report or Anwar Ibrahim. In June approximately half of all the articles written for this supposedly US-focused website had consisted of attacks on Anwar and SR, which were then being reproduced in Malaysia Watcher and Sarawak Reports!
Illegal TV programmes commissioned by Taib and Najib
- TV lies – Taib bought the slot as advertising!
Of course, the most sensational part of the whole affair has been the revelation that FBC also did deals with both Najib and Taib to place promotional TV films about them and about BN’s policies on some of the world’s most respected news channels, including the BBC and CNBC.
FBC held production contracts for a number of supposedly objective news shows and documentary series and the company was illegally selling the airtime as advertising space for high-spending politicians and companies, including Malaysia and the palm oil industry.
Sarawak Report even gained copies of the contract between FBC’s Chairman, Alan Friedman and Taib, in which the Chief Minister was promised a series of opportunities to improve his bad reputation on human rights and the environment.
"Let's shake hands on it" - Najib has paid Alan Friedman's FBC Media RM 84 million to break broadcasting rules in a series of TV "puff pieces" and interviews.
One of these films, aired on CNBC’s World Business (a show produced by FBC Media), claimed that 80% of Sarawak’s forests have been left undamaged and untouched by Taib’s logging and oil palm plantations!
After Sarawak Report broke the scandal, both BBC World and CNBC terminated all contracts with FBC Media, pending investigations.
The UK regulatory authority Ofcom is also conducting a full-scale investigation into how politicians like Taib and Najib were able to spend millions of their own taxpayers’ money on such vanity TV projects, which was against broadcasting laws.
So, the FBC Media expose has meant a set-back not just for Taib’s ‘Cyber Campaign’, but for his whole ‘Global Media Strategy’, into which he has poured millions of taxpayers’ hard earned money.
Najib has likewise been exposed for the same misjudgement and complicity in the corruption of respected international TV stations, all at the enormous expense of public funds!
What about CNN?
- Back reporting Malaysia for CNN – did John Defterios mention to CNN bosses back in 2010 that he was President of FBC, which had received RM 84 million to promote Malayisa? CNN so far says it isn’t relevant!
Sarawak Report and other news media in the UK and US are awaiting the final reports of Ofcom, The BBC and CNBC into these scandals.
Meanwhile, the position of CNN still remains highly questionable. Because this station was also carrying programmes featuring Najib and other FBC clients at a time when FBC’s President, John Defterios was anchoring the relevant CNN shows and programmes.
CNN has so far claimed that it is not prepared to investigate such placement of FBC clients on their shows or the connection with Mr Defterios, because it says John Defterios had already resigned from FBC when he became a staff presenter in March of this year.
In fact the records show that Mr Defterios did not resign until 4 days AFTER our expose on FBC in Sarawak Report! Indeed, just three weeks previously he had aired a much-criticised interview with Najib Razak for CNN, letting him off far too lightly over the treatment of the Bersih rally, according to many commentators.
Under US broadcasting laws any such conflicts of interest should be openly declared, whether or not the interested members of the production team are on contract or staff. For this reason Sarawak Reports is reporting CNN to Ofcom for its refusal to examine the potential corruption of its content by a current senior member of its staff.
Lynn Fritz - fellow FBC Board Member and shareholder. FBC President, John Defterios, was happy to promote him on his shows!
Not over yet
The PM and CM’s global strategic media strategies may now be in tatters, and the attack sites Sarawak Reports and Malaysia Watcher may be finished. New Ledger may also have gone back to attacking US Democrats instead of Malaysian liberals, however there is plenty to go on this story.
Armed with taxpayers cash, it seems more than likely that Taib and Najib will be already going about planning how to come back with a second wave of ‘media warfare’ against those who are seeking to expose corruption in Malaysia.
But, chances are they will be wasting that cash once again, because once the truth is out it is impossible to hide.
http://www.sarawakreport.org
As a result of these shortcomings in the media, politically motivated publics are starting to assemble online and in the real world. And this, I think, is what is driving the occupations movement - the recognition that the descriptions on offer in the mainstream media don't make sense, that the machinery of representative politics is broken, and that these are two aspects of the same problem.When people meet at the occupations they adopt techniques for discussion and deliberation that aspire to what C. Wright Mills would have called public communication. The assemblies that have sprung up are explicitly intended to ensure that ' virtually as many people express opinions as receive them'. The occupiers are seeking to create a shared understanding that in turn informs a political programme, that is, to communicate in publicly effectual ways.
So far these innovations and the conversations between equals they make possible have barely featured in the world of broadcast publicity, the information system that most people rely on most of the time. Television likes to draw on a stable spectrum of supposedly legitimate opinion to frame debates about public policy. It has, for the most part, never occurred to them that they might better spend their time facilitating discussion between citizens. Consider this - when did you last see two 'ordinary people' discuss any matter of public interest at length on television?
An EXCLUSIVE insider report by YL Chong, aka Desiderata
(IF thou knoweth not who YL, Desi is, please quickly get the here out of hel!:)
The saga has its incubation a few days ago in a Malaysian Insider story about impending changes at the top editorial and management levels of New Straits Times Press, an UMNO-controlled propaganda machine if you don't know (you haven't come out of the cave ah?)
In a by the way mention, MI reported that 12-year-old pioneer news portalMalaysiakini is holding talks with Malay Mail, perceived as yet another UMNO -- if not UMNO, then an Establishment -- newspaper. (A fellow Blogger named Rockybru was helming this "free" paper until very recently, and the Datuk Ahirudin Attan started a blog-newspaper The Mole on September 16, 2011, but that's another story...Why I mentioned this name was because it was speculated by MC maybe, just maybe, Rocky has a role to play in the MM-Mkini deal...)
The Malaysia Chronicle under a former Mkini editor Ms Wong Choon Mei (also formerly Reuters) picked up the MI report and expanded on it with a follow-up that Umno or its goons might end up calling the shots at Mkini.
As expected (by those who know Mkini CEO Premesh Chandran well (like this writer for YL Chong is also a former Mkini News Editor in 2000!) in a press statement vehemently denied about a Mkini-MM deal, even asked Ms Wong CM to retract her portal's story. I think it was a case of big brother in Internet news trying to bully a young sister -- but having interacted with Wong CM, Premesh in the press world is just a mouse compared with a cat.
WHY DO I SAY THIS?
Back Story
Okay, just bear with me while I narrate a BACK STORY.
Some time in early 2001, the Far Eastern Review ran a short report saying that Mkini was receiving money from "purported" rogue trader (as alleged by several Malaysian leaders including the then Prime Minister), George Soros. FEER claimed the money was channeled through South East Asia Press Alliance (SEAPA). Yes, Premesh denied this report of George Soros funding, whether "direct of indirect".
I later found at a company meeting that Premesh was not being truthful. I wrote later that while FEER was barking up the right tree, it was standing on the wrong branch. The investment money came NOT from SEAPA but from the Media Development Loan Fund (MIDF), via a George Soros unit called the Open Society Institute which has many offices outside of the United States.
I was then News Editor, and hence privy to information raised at Mkini's meetings, and I had learned that indeed Mkini had received an initial 10percent down payment of RM188,000 for a 10percent interest in Mkini. At a weekend meeting I told the top two guns--Steven Gan and Premesh Chandran-- they had better come clean by telling the "full story" and not half-truths. I said how the investment money came through from George Soros -- direct or indirect -- was not important. The truth was indeed that RM188,000 came as initial investment from MDLF, a Soros unit.
I told them since Mkini flagged itself as promoting transparency and openness, it was not right to hide the fact. I said I had no problem with funding from Soros into the news portal -- as long as we practised ethical journalism.
Since the top two guns did not agree with me -- in fact Steven Gan said it would be the death of Malaysiakini if they admitted to receiving this Soros funding! -- I was given Hobson's choice but told them I would hand in my resignation the following Monday (two days later).
Premesh in a following press statement kept on insisting it was NOT true when I said indeed, the FEER story was correct in essence -- barking up the right tree but wrong branch was my metaphoric narrative! -- disclosed when I went public on why I resigned. Premesh still vehemently denied the story of Mkini having received money from George Soros, and defamed me by saying I resigned over dissatisfaction over my "pay"!
I believe it was some 10 to 11 months later, MDLF paid the remaining 90percent of its investme, or more than the 1.88million initially indicated at the time of my resignation) or MORE for a 30percent (? I stand corrected on this point on the numbers). I drew the NST attention to this development and it ran an update story on this development.
ends Back Story
Now this back story is important to show that Premesh has always been a consistent liar or telling half-truths. He had initially vehementy denied on reaction the MI breaking the story on MM-Mkini holding negotiations.
But today, with tail between his legs, Steven Gan admitted that indeed in gist the MI story and subsequent follow-up reports by Malaysia Chronicle was true in essence. I reproduce the initial paras in MC's latest report below++++. The differences are only on the details. Refer the following:
Despite his vociferous denials of our report on the 13th of October, Malaysiakini’s Premesh Chandran failed to come clean and admit that Malaysiakini is in fact in discussion with the Malay Mail.
This was admitted to by Steven Gan under the melodramatic headline that he would sell out of Malaysiakini over his ‘dead body’. But Gan is not Karpal Singh.
Towards the bottom of his article, Gan admitted that Malaysiakini is in fact in discussions with The Malay Mail.
It is not clear whether the infamous ‘Rocky Bru’, who moved from criticizing the BN to supporting it overnight (to the horror and disgust of his many supporters), was part of the discussions.
Gan then noted that while he may end up selling his news to The Malay Mail, this would not affect editorial policy. He neglected to explain why the pro-government Malay Mail would want to run any news which is positive to the opposition.
A deliberating public
Any process of free deliberation can easily be misrepresented and many in the conventional media are busy doing so. This is hardly surprising. The occupations have declared the spectrum of opinion visible in the broadcast media inadequate and indeed unreal. They are discussing first principles on the basis of equality and mutual recognition. It will take time for some journalists to recognise that their current working assumptions and practises are part of the problem the assemblies are seeking to remedy.
A deliberating public is not an organised and disciplined group, which can be expected to remain unswervingly on message. So it is a simple matter to find cranks and to declare that they somehow embody the meaning of an occupation. When they aren’t accusing them of deranged extremism, broadcasters and others sometimes decide that the occupiers are incoherent and confused, which is another way of criticising a participatory model for not adopting the message control preferred by modern political parties and corporate public relations departments.
Indeed, for the most part, the major media cannot bring itself to notice the political intent of occupation-and-assembly, to register that what is being tried is another kind of politics, which entails a different model of communication. Yet this is a movement with a long history. Though significant numbers of people in Britain and the United States are only beginning to master the language of assemblies and working groups, citizens in Latin America have been building participatory forms for decades.
Journalists are not stupid. They must know that their audiences will not be satisfied for much longer with coverage that defers to a ridiculous political and economic establishment while mocking or misrepresenting serious and well-intentioned citizens. It is past time that journalists found ways of reporting that support public participation. They have been trained to convey the views of the decision-makers inside to the masses outside. But rather than watch a simulacrum of public life, more and more people are looking to achieve public status for themselves. They are looking for media that acknowledges this and helps the citizen body to form itself, to clarify its opinions, and act as it thinks best.
The challenge for many journalists, in other words, is to describe what is happening in front of their eyes. If they choose to remain committed to their understanding of how communications should be organised, if they remain wedded to their privileges as operatives in the mass media, they risk irrelevance. For the occupations are not demonstrations or mobs. They are an attempt to create a public society.
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