Israel: ‘Delegitimization’ is just a distraction

M J Rosenberg writes:

Suddenly, all the major pro-Israel organizations are anguishing about “delegitimization.” Those who criticize Israeli policies are accused of trying to delegitimize Israel, which supposedly means denying Israel’s right to exist.

The concept of delegitimization has been used as a weapon against Israel’s critics at least as far back as 1975, when then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Daniel Patrick Moynihan accused the international body of delegitimizing Israel by passing a “Zionism is racism ” resolution. That may have been the last time the term was used accurately.

In a May speech, President Obama used it in reference to the Palestinian effort to seek recognition of their national aspirations at the U.N. General Assembly, as Israel successfully did in 1947. He said that “for the Palestinians, efforts to delegitimize Israel will end in failure.” But he failed to explain just how a Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations would delegitimize Israel.

The Palestinians are not, after all, seeking statehood in Israeli territory but in territory that the whole world, including Israel, recognizes as having been occupied by Israel only after the 1967 war. Rather than seeking Israel’s elimination, the Palestinians who intend to go to the United Nations are seeking establishment of a state alongside Israel. (That state would encompass 22% of the British mandate for Palestine, approved by the League of Nations in 1922, with Israel possessing 78%.)

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The danger of Jewish women being attracted to Arab men

Ynet reports:

The Organization for Prevention of Assimilation in the Holy Land (Lehava) has decided to start “defending the daughters of Israel” on the country’s beaches.

According to the organization, many Arab men are posing as Jews, courting and harassing the beautiful women. In response, a “coast guard” aimed at fighting the alleged phenomenon has been set up.

In recent weeks, Lehava members have been handing out dozens of leaflets to Jewish women on the beaches of Bat Yam, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Caesarea and Eilat, asking them to maintain their Jewishness and not to give in to the non-Jewish men’s appeals.

The organization decided to do something after receiving complaints from many women who claimed to be harassed by non-Jewish men on the beach.

“Last year we discovered that there are many gentiles arriving at the beaches, but not in search of the sun or water,” said Benzi Gopstein, one of Lehava’s leaders.

“Due to the multiple complaints,” he explained, “we decided to promote a campaign at the start of the bathing season this year in order to prevent situations in which girls discover that the ‘Yossi’ they are dating is actually ‘Yusuf’, prevent sexual harassment and assimilation.

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CIA links add to riddle over killing of ‘King of Kandahar’

Miles Amoore reports:

Ahmad Wali Karzai, the half-brother of the Afghan president, lived under constant fear of assassination. His death last week was the latest of 10 attempts to kill him.

“The seventh bomb to target me was so big that hundreds of cats fed on human flesh for days afterwards,” he told me last July.

The man who finally killed Karzai was someone he trusted with his life. Not only was Sardar Mohammed a close confidant, but he also worked as an informant for the CIA, according to relatives, Karzai’s friends and the Afghan intelligence agency.

Mohammed, who shot dead Karzai, 49, at his home on Tuesday, ran a network of spies who passed information to the CIA, according to Mohammed’s brothers-in-law, two of whom work for the CIA.

Karzai, known as the “King of Kandahar” for the iron fist with which he ruled the southern province, was himself working for the CIA, according to his brother Mahmoud.

Karzai, likened to the gangster Al Capone by US officials for his alleged links to the drug trade, helped the US spy agency run a clandestine paramilitary unit called the Kandahar Strike Force. The CIA uses the unit to conduct covert counterterrorism operations in the city. Some members of the strike force are in prison in Kabul for shooting dead Kandahar’s police chief in 2009. Critics say that Karzai used the militia to kill off his rivals.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports:

A close adviser to President Hamid Karzai was killed on Sunday night after two gunmen stormed his walled home here. It was the second killing in less than a week of one of the president’s trusted but controversial political allies.

The aide who was killed on Sunday, Jan Mohammed Khan, served as governor of Oruzgan Province until 2006, when he was removed at insistence of Dutch officials over concerns that he was linked to drug rings. Since then, he had been a regular presence at the presidential palace.

He was killed alongside Mohammed Hasham Watanwal, a member of Parliament from Oruzgan.

The killing was another potentially heavy blow for Mr. Karzai, whose powerful half brother Ahmed Wali Karzai was assassinated on Tuesday by a close associate in southern Afghanistan. It also heightened concerns that militants were trying weaken the president’s standing and unravel the tenuous security gains in the still-violent south after months of intensified fighting by NATO and Afghan forces.

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Nelson Mandela: From prisoner to president

David Africa writes:

As South Africans celebrate the birthday of their national hero Nelson Mandela all the accolades again praise him as a peacemaker, moderate, and a saint. This image of Mandela is one that has been aggressively cultivated since his elevation from prisoner to president with the first democratic election in 1994, and is a curious part of a political project with the twin objectives of moderating one of the primary symbols of the South African liberation struggle on the one hand, and appropriating this ‘new Mandela’ for a moderate or even conservative political project.

The saint-like status that Mandela has acquired in the West, traditionally hostile to Mandela’s politics and that of his organisation the African National Congress (ANC) is mirrored in the false adulation showered upon him by the local parliamentary opposition party the Democratic Alliance. The Democratic Alliance is mainly a coalition of former liberals and the remnants of the National Party that ruled South Africa until 1994. The capture of the Mandela icon and his transformation from militant to moderate saint is now almost complete.

And yet, this is not the Mandela that black South Africans know. The Mandela we know has always been a militant, from his days as a fiery youth leader in the 1940s, through leading the ANC Defiance Campaign against the Apartheid government in 1952 and being the first commander of that organisation’s armed wing when it turned to violent resistance in 1961.

His speech to the court in April 1964, as he and his fellow ANC comrades faced the real risk of the death penalty, is an articulation of a militancy that is at once reasonable and defiant. Throughout his long imprisonment Mandela refused offers of personal freedom in exchange for abandoning violent resistance to the Apartheid government.

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Scotland Yard chief quits over hacking scandal

BBC News reports:

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson has resigned following the phone hacking scandal.

Britain’s most senior police officer has faced criticism for hiring former News of the World executive Neil Wallis – who was questioned by police investigating hacking – as an adviser.

Sir Paul said his links to the journalist could hamper investigations.

He said there were lessons to be learned from the affair, but he was leaving with his integrity intact.

The Guardian reports:

Sir Paul Stephenson, the Metropolitan police commissioner, had social drinks on up to four occasions over the past two years with the former News of the World deputy editor who was arrested and then bailed last week.

Stephenson already faces a grilling this week by a parliamentary select committee over his recruitment of Neil Wallis as a public relations consultant last year. Wallis, known as “Wolfman” on Fleet Street because of his fiery temper and his beard, worked at the NoW between 2003 and 2009, a period when the phone hacking by reporters on the newspaper is alleged to have taken place.

Now it has emerged that on top of 18 business meals he took with Wallis and other News International executives between 2005 and 2009, which were acknowledged on the gifts and hospitality register, the commissioner also socialised in his own time with the former tabloid journalist.

The development is of particular concern because it is understood that Stephenson accepted a personal assurance from Wallis that he had nothing to do with phone hacking at the paper.

It is also understood that during a 12-year friendship, the Met’s assistant commissioner, John Yates, enjoyed dozens of social drinks with Wallis, including several occasions over the past two years when the officer was involved in reviewing the phone-hacking investigation. A source said: “They are close friends and know each other well.”

The revelations will concern the home affairs select committee, which has called Stephenson to attend a hearing on Tuesday. Scotland Yard was forced to respond to further allegations which may now also be raised during the hearing.

On Saturday night, it emerged that earlier this year Stephenson, who earns £276,000 a year, accepted a free five-week holiday at Champneys, in Tring, Hertfordshire, a spa resort promoted by the Outside Organisation, a public relations firm for which Wallis is managing director.

Scotland Yard insisted that the holiday, estimated to be worth £12,000, was a gift from the managing director of the resort, who has been a friend of Stephenson’s for 20 years.

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The new Mubaraks: Egypt’s military rulers try to strangle the revolution

The New York Times reports:

The military council governing Egypt is moving to lay down ground rules for a new constitution that would protect and potentially expand its own authority indefinitely, possibly circumscribing the power of future elected officials.

The military announced Tuesday that it planned to adopt a “declaration of basic principles” to govern the drafting of a constitution, and liberals here initially welcomed the move as a concession to their demand for a Bill of Rights-style guarantee of civil liberties that would limit the potential repercussions of an Islamist victory at the polls.

But legal experts enlisted by the military to write the declaration say that it will spell out the armed forces’ role in the civilian government, potentially shielding the defense budget from public or parliamentary scrutiny and protecting the military’s vast economic interests. Proposals under consideration would give the military a broad mandate to intercede in Egyptian politics to protect national unity or the secular character of the state. A top general publicly suggested such a role, according to a report last month in the Egyptian newspaper Al- Masry Al- Youm. The military plans to adopt the document on its own, before any election, referendum or constitution sets up a civilian authority, said Mohamed Nour Farahat, a law professor working on the declaration. That would represent an about-face for a force that, after helping to oust President Hosni Mubarak five months ago, consistently pledged to turn over power to elected officials who would draft a constitution. Though the proposed declaration might protect liberals from an Islamist-dominated constitution, it could also limit democracy by shielding the military from full civilian control.

The Associated Press reports:

The military, which was greeted with cheers when it pushed out longtime president Hosni Mubarak in February, has proclaimed its embrace of the revolution and democratic elections later this year. But protesters have returned to Tahrir Square, holding a sit-in since July 8, to complain that the military has hijacked the transition and has been reluctant to purge members of the old regime.

Reported abuses add a darker undertone to those complaints. There have been multiple reports of torture of detainees. To an unprecedented extent, the army has also been bringing civilians before military courts, notorious for their swift rulings with little chance for defense. In five months, more than 10,000 civilians have been put on military trial, including protesters, activists and at least one journalist who wrote an article critical of the army, according to rights groups tracking the detentions.

“The revolution has been stolen by the military council,” said Issam, the long-haired “Singer of the Revolution” who is known for rousing the crowd in Tahrir Square with political tunes on his Spanish guitar. “We made the revolution and we gave it to the military council on a silver platter. But everyone must know that we have learned how to say ‘No.'”

Issam seemed close to tears as he visited the Egyptian Museum in early July for the first time since his detention and recounted his ordeal to an Associated Press reporter.

He was among dozens grabbed by soldiers who broke up a March 9 sit-in in Tahrir protesting the generals’ slowness in implementing the revolution’s post-Mubarak demands.

Issam and the others were dragged to the nearby museum, the treasure trove of pharaonic antiquities that the military used as an impromptu base at times during the uprising. There, Issam says, he was beaten by wooden sticks and iron rods and given electric shocks. His hair was cut off with broken glass.

After a public outcry over that day’s crackdown, the council promised to review reports of torture, but no results of a review have been made public. It also admitted that some detained women were forced to take humiliating “virginity tests,” and it said the practice would not be repeated.

Amid the beatings, Issam recalled the warning shouted at him by one of the officers:

“We will make you know who are the real masters of this country.”

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Israeli military commander says Jewish terror camp in West Bank must be shut down

Haaretz reports:

GOC Central Command Avi Mizrahi said Saturday that the yeshiva [seminary] in the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar must be shut down since it functions as a source of terror that must be dealt with.

Speaking to ‘Meet the Press’ on Channel 2 television, Mizrahi stated that several of the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva leaders hold views that are not “consistent with democracy”, although they represent only a small minority of the settler community.

Mizrahi went on to characterize settler attacks on Palestinian residents of the West Bank as “Jewish terror”, and implored the courts to do more in order to support security forces in deterring such events from occurring.

A Yitzhar spokesperson responded to the statements, saying that Mizrahi should refrain from acting as a judge set on persecuting membersof the yeshiva.

Yitzhar has become known as one of the most radical settlements in the West Bank. Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, one of the heads of Od Yosef Chai, was detained last year on suspicion of incitement following the publication of his book, “Torat Hamelech,” which called for the killing of non-Jews who seek to harm Israel, but was not charged with any crime.

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Rebekah Brooks volunteers to get arrested — London police oblige — updated

The Guardian reports:

Rebekah Brooks has been arrested by police investigating allegations of phone hacking by the News of the World and allegations that police officers were bribed to leak sensitive information.

The Metropolitan police said a 43-year-old woman was arrested at noon on Sunday, by appointment at a London police station.

Brooks, 43, resigned on Friday as News International’s chief executive. She is a former News of the World editor and was close to Rupert Murdoch and the prime minister, David Cameron.

Brooks was due to give evidence before MPs on the culture select committee on Tuesday.

An arrest by appointment on a Sunday by police is unusual.

Unusual because the police generally only schedule appointments for arrest during regular business hours, or because most people getting arrested aren’t offered an opportunity to schedule their arrest in advance?

Apparently Brooks was notified about her impending arrest on Friday. Maybe she had a dinner party she needed to attend yesterday evening and so couldn’t turn herself in until today.

Her PR spokesman said: “Rebekah is assisting the police with their enquiries. She attended a London police station voluntarily.” And if she hadn’t volunteered?

Meanwhile, The Independent on Sunday reports:

The MP who will lead the attack on Rebekah Brooks and Rupert and James Murdoch this week over their roles in the phone-hacking scandal has close links with the media empire, it is revealed today.

John Whittingdale, the Conservative chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport committee, admitted he was an old friend of Mr Murdoch’s close aide, Les Hinton, and had been for dinner with Ms Brooks.

The Independent on Sunday has also learnt that Mr Murdoch’s daughter Elisabeth, seen as the future saviour of the company, has also met Mr Whittingdale a number of times. Among her 386 “friends” on Facebook, the only MP she lists is Mr Whittingdale. He is also the only MP among 93 Facebook “friends” of Mr Hinton.

The Guardian‘s Matt Wells adds:

The arrest of Rebekah Brooks in relation to phone hacking and corruption drags News Corporation deeper into crisis.

It must surely mean that the police investigation is edging closer to James Murdoch, who has been head of all News Corporation’s businesses in Europe and Asia since 2007. He personally approved payments to civil litigants against the News of the World in settlement of their cases – deals that involved gagging clauses that appears to have prevented them discussing potential criminal activity in public.

There are two other important things to note from the arrest of Brooks. It is a personal blow for Rupert Murdoch, who had invested so much in the career of Brooks, promoting her though the Wapping ranks at lightening speed and describing her as the “daughter he never had.” (he actually has four).

It must also set nerves on edge in Downing Street – only on Friday, it was revealed that David Cameron had hosted Brooks twice at Chequers, the only guest to be granted a second visit in his premiership. They also met socially over Christmas.

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Rupert Murdoch’s empire must be dismantled says Labour party leader

The Guardian reports:

Ed Miliband has demanded the breakup of Rupert Murdoch’s UK media empire in a dramatic intervention in the row over phone hacking.

In an exclusive interview with the Observer, the Labour leader calls for cross-party agreement on new media ownership laws that would cut Murdoch’s current market share, arguing that he has “too much power over British public life”.

Miliband says that the abandonment by News International of its bid for BSkyB, the resignation of its chief executive, Rebekah Brooks, and the closure of the News of the World are insufficient to restore trust and reassure the public.

The Labour leader argues that current media ownership rules are outdated, describing them as “analogue rules for a digital age” that do not take into account the advent of mass digital and satellite broadcasting.

“I think that we’ve got to look at the situation whereby one person can own more than 20% of the newspaper market, the Sky platform and Sky News,” Miliband said. “I think it’s unhealthy because that amount of power in one person’s hands has clearly led to abuses of power within his organisation. If you want to minimise the abuses of power then that kind of concentration of power is frankly quite dangerous.”

Meanwhile, The Independent reports:

The scale of private links between David Cameron and News International was exposed for the first time last night, with the Prime Minister shown to have met Rupert Murdoch’s executives on no fewer than 26 occasions in just over a year since he entered Downing Street.

Rebekah Brooks, who resigned yesterday as chief executive of Mr Murdoch’s Wapping titles over the escalating scandal, is the only person Mr Cameron has invited twice to Chequers, a privilege not extended even to the most senior members of his Cabinet. James Murdoch, News Corp’s chairmanin Europe and the man responsible for pushing through the BSkyB bid, was a guest at the Prime Minister’s official country residence eight months ago. And the former NOTW editor Andy Coulson – who was arrested this week in connection with police corruption and phone hacking – was invited by Mr Cameron to spend a private weekend at Chequers as recently as March

No 10 bowed to pressure over Mr Cameron’s handling of the phone-hacking scandal last night and released details of all his contacts with senior staff at the company since he became Prime Minister. Mr Cameron has held more than twice the number of meetings with Murdoch executives as he has with any other media organisation. There were two “social” meetings between Mr Cameron and Ms Brooks, one of which was also attended by James Murdoch, and in return they invited the Prime Minister to a succession of parties.

Mr Cameron and Ms Brooks, who are neighbours in West Oxfordshire, met over Christmas – including a get-together on Boxing Day – just days after Vince Cable was relieved of responsibility for deciding the fate of News Corp’s BSkyB bid. Downing Street has always refused to discuss what they talked about, but officials insist that the subject of the BSkyB takeover was never raised.

While James Murdoch met Mr Cameron twice over the period, on both occasions he avoided the spotlight of Downing Street. That was not a qualm shared by his father, who was invited to visit Mr Cameron at Downing Street days after the general election.

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How the British police colluded with News of the World

The New York Times reports:

For nearly four years they lay piled in a Scotland Yard evidence room, six overstuffed plastic bags gathering dust and little else.

Inside was a treasure-trove of evidence: 11,000 pages of handwritten notes listing nearly 4,000 celebrities, politicians, sports stars, police officials and crime victims whose phones may have been hacked by The News of the World, a now defunct British tabloid newspaper.

Yet from August 2006, when the items were seized, until the autumn of 2010, no one at the Metropolitan Police Service, commonly referred to as Scotland Yard, bothered to sort through all the material and catalog every page, said former and current senior police officials.

During that same time, senior Scotland Yard officials assured Parliament, judges, lawyers, potential hacking victims, the news media and the public that there was no evidence of widespread hacking by the tabloid. They steadfastly maintained that their original inquiry, which led to the conviction of one reporter and one private investigator, had put an end to what they called an isolated incident.

After the past week, that assertion has been reduced to tatters, torn apart by a spectacular avalanche of contradictory evidence, admissions by News International executives that hacking was more widespread, and a reversal by police officials who now admit to mishandling the case.

Assistant Commissioner John Yates of the Metropolitan Police Service publicly acknowledged that he had not actually gone through the evidence. “I’m not going to go down and look at bin bags,” Mr. Yates said, using the British term for trash bags.

At best, former Scotland Yard senior officers acknowledged in interviews, the police have been lazy, incompetent and too cozy with the people they should have regarded as suspects. At worst, they said, some officers might be guilty of crimes themselves.

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$14 million and gag orders for departing News International executive

The Independent reports:

Five days after the News of the World rolled off the presses for the last time, Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of its publisher News International, walked out of the company with a severance package estimated by senior colleagues at £3.5m.

Her departure follows that of the final editor of the NOTW, Colin Myler, who is understood to be in line for a £2m pay-off, and two of the company’s senior lawyers, Jon Chapman and Tom Crone, who will each get about £1.5m.

Brooks’ resignation was followed last night by that of Les Hinton, chief executive of Dow Jones, the US branch of Rupert Murdoch’s empire which publishes the prized Wall Street Journal, as the media mogul lost two trusted lieutenants in a single day. Mr Hinton’s payout will further add to News Corp’s bills.

The settlements with senior Murdoch executives will include strict gagging orders to stop them discussing company affairs outside the judge-led public inquiry or criminal proceedings.

The pay-offs contrast with the treatment of nearly 200 lower-ranking workers at the NOTW waiting to hear if they will be made redundant. A leaked email reveals police are effectively treating the paper’s newsroom as a crime scene and forbidding any access to former staff “even under escort”.

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The fight to rescue the Arab spring

The Guardian reports:

The historic revolutions that have rippled through the Arab world this year were in danger of eclipse on Friday night as protesters returned to the streets to profess their disgust at how the movement is being stymied by regimes old and new.

Six months after the Arab spring claimed its first dictator, the main squares of Cairo and Tunis were again alive with protest, teargas and fury at the resistance to change shown by interim authorities. In Syria activists said at least 19 people had been killed in the latest crackdown against protests that have convulsed the country for more than four months. At least seven people were killed in Yemen amid a political limbo that appears no closer to resolution. And in Jordan a heavy security presence policed pro- and anti-reform demonstrations which turned violent.

The scenes served as a reminder that following the euphoria of the Arab spring, little concrete progress towards reform has been made. Elections in Tunisia and Egypt have been postponed. Offers of reform in Yemen and Syria have been rejected as inadequate.

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Campaigners seek arrest of former CIA legal chief over Pakistan drone attacks

The Guardian reports:

Campaigners against US drone strikes in Pakistan are calling for the CIA’s former legal chief to be arrested and charged with murder for approving attacks that killed hundreds of people.

Amid growing concern around the world over the use of drones, lawyers and relatives of some of those killed are seeking an international arrest warrant for John Rizzo, until recently acting general counsel for the American intelligence agency.

Opponents of drones say the unmanned aircraft are responsible for the deaths of up to 2,500 Pakistanis in 260 attacks since 2004. US officials say the vast majority of those killed are “militants”. Earlier this week 48 people were killed in two strikes on tribal regions of Pakistan. The American definition of “militant” has been disputed by relatives and campaigners.

The attempt to seek an international arrest warrant for Rizzo is being led by the British human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith of the campaign group Reprieve, and lawyers in Pakistan. The lawyers are also building cases against other individuals, including drone operators interviewed or photographed during organised press facilities.

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Is Murdoch now getting advice from Gaddafi?

“News Corp is not Rupert Murdoch,” says Murdoch.

In this gesture of mock humility, I don’t think the News Corp CEO is suggesting that, for the good of the company, he’s ready to bow out. It’s much more like Muammar Gaddafi saying that he can’t step down from power in Libya because supposedly he’s not the head of state.

News Corp “is the collective creativity and effort of many thousands of people around the world, and few individuals have given more to this company than Les Hinton,” said Murdoch just as he dumped the Dow Jones CEO.

Murdoch ditched News of the World in order to protect News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks, but then he ended up getting rid of her too.

Having now got rid of Hinton, Murdoch is probably nursing the fantasy that he won’t have to axe his son and heir apparent, James, but as Jack Shafer notes, James’ departure is all but certain.

Next week, Murdoch and his son James, who paid settlements to phone-hacking victims, will appear before a parliamentary committee after first declining the request. After saying he’s sorry, Murdoch will say he’s sorry again and again and again. James, who isn’t any sorrier than his father, will say the same thing, but it won’t work, because he paid hush money and is therefore a part of the scandal. As the Telegraph reported this week, as long as Brooks stayed on the payroll, she shielded James from some of the more vociferous attacks. She, after all, was News of the World editor when Dowler’s phone was hacked. But Brooks’ resignation exposes James Murdoch to the fury now, which he can’t possibly endure.

Rupert knows this, and knows that he must soon sacrifice his favorite son. Murdoch’s predicament illustrates why no parent should have only one offspring—a backup unit must be kept at all times in case something dreadful happens to the child you’re depending on. It’s Murdoch’s good luck that he has two children who can replace James while he does his time in Siberia. Both Elisabeth, a media tycoon in her own right, and Lachlan, the eldest son and previous heir apparent, could take James’ place in the News Corp. hierarchy. Neither carries any phone-hacking scandal taint, and both are ambitious. Where did Elisabeth stand on the Brooks question? According to a Telegraph report, she told friends that Brooks had “f***** the company.”

Would Murdoch really sack his son? I don’t see why we should rule out infanticide in this case. Writing in the Financial Times this week, former media tycoon and convicted felon Conrad Black held that “Murdoch has no loyalty to anyone or anything except his company. He has difficulty keeping friendships; rarely keeps his word for long; is an exploiter of the discomfort of others; and has betrayed every political leader who ever helped him in any country, except Ronald Reagan and perhaps Tony Blair.”

Murdoch biographer, Michael Wolff, says Elisabeth Murdoch was misquoted. “She said: ‘James and Rebekah fucked the company,'” Wolff tweeted.

Matt Wells writes:

No relationship is safe, no loyal bond strong enough for Rupert Murdoch who – looking more than the sum of his 80 years – is mounting a final battle to save the company he built from nothing.

His decision to throw Les Hinton to the wolves is his most dramatic move yet. For more than 50 years, as a journalist and then an executive, Hinton loyally served the Murdoch empire from its roots in Australia to the height of its power in New York.

Now, in a desperate effort to save News Corporation’s most valuable assets – its 27 US broadcast licences and the 20th Century Fox movie studio – Murdoch is prepared to sacrifice one of his closest allies.

The problem for Murdoch is that every time he ditches a key executive, the flames of scandal flick ever closer to him.

Murdoch’s despotic tendencies were on full display in an interview he did for his paper, the Wall Street Journal, where he took the opportunity to say what an admirable job he has done so far in handling the crisis.

Alex Klein writes:

“In Interview, Murdoch Defends News Corp.” proclaims a much-buzzed headline on the Murdoch and News Corp.-owned Wall Street Journal. It’s a stretch of a title. The 700-word piece is less “interview” than stenography, a generous opportunity for the mogul to swagger, project confidence, and bend the truth. There are a lot of so-sad-it’s-funny quotes, but the best by far is Murdoch’s promise to institute a “protocol for behavior” at all of his newspapers. This meaningless pledge falls right in line with a great deal of bad News of the World commentary that misconstrues the paper’s sins as journalistic overreach or inappropriateness. Stealing, bribing, and hacking aren’t a ‘best practices’ issue, like misattributing a quote or wearing hawaiian shirts to work: they’re illegal. Beyond breaking stuffy American ethics protocol, News International broke real British law. So unless the first bullet-point in News International’s new “protocol for behavior” is “Don’t commit crimes. Also don’t cover up crimes by committing more crimes,” I’m not quite sure what he and the Journal are playing at. The dishonest two-step from illegality to immorality is even reflected in the Journal’s own reporting, which frames the issue as one of “dubious reporting tactics.” And as Media Matters has pointed out, it took the paper a whole week — and a couple of buried NOTW stories — before it reported that its own publisher and Murdoch friend Les Hinton has a starring role in the scandal.

Larry Flynt fears that Murdoch’s lack of concern for the public interest now puts every publisher at risk:

One cannot live off the liberty and benefits of a free press while ignoring the privacy of the people. People such as Murdoch and I, as heads of publishing conglomerates, have a responsibility to maintain and respect this boundary. While Murdoch may understand the significance of what we do under the umbrella of free speech, he may fail to recognize the liability attached to publication. Simply put, he publishes what he wants, apparently regardless of how he gets information and heedless of the responsibility associated with the power he wields.

Murdoch’s enterprises have consistently published stories about people who did not give permission to have their private lives dissected in the media — and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. News Corp. employees allegedly hired known criminals to obtain private information about former British prime minister Gordon Brown when his infant son was given a diagnosis of cystic fibrosis. News Corp. employees allegedly hired investigators who hacked into the phones of victims of the 9/11 attacks in the United States and the July 7, 2005, bombings in London. And News Corp. employees allegedly paid police officers for illegally obtained information about the queen. Meanwhile, Roger Ailes, chief of Murdoch’s Fox News, runs a well-oiled propaganda machine.

So it only seems fair that Murdoch was forced to close the News of the World tabloid, that he has had to abandon his bid for British Sky Broadcasting and that his reputation, not stellar to begin with, is forever tarnished.

No matter how offensive or distasteful some people may find Hustler magazine and my other publications, no one has appeared unwillingly in their pages. I do not create sensationalism at the expense of people living private lives. Yes, I have offered money to those willing to expose hypocritical politicians — one of those offers, in 1998, resulted in the resignation of Bob Livingston, a Republican congressman from Louisiana who voted to impeach President Bill Clinton despite his own extramarital affairs. I focus not on those who are innocent, but rather on those who practice the opposite of what they very publicly preach. This may be considered an extreme or controversial practice in getting a story, but it is far from criminal.

On a daily basis, and in ways that the general public does not even recognize, our right to privacy is disappearing rapidly. Our political leaders allow companies such as Google and Facebook to continually infringe on this right. Both of those companies serve as data mines, selling information about their users. Facebook, behind a mask of individual privacy settings, has almost single-handedly killed privacy; founder Mark Zuckerberg has actually stated, according to reports, that he doesn’t believe in privacy. The government needs to get back to its roots: protecting the privacy of its citizens while encouraging the individual freedoms on which this country was founded.

Freedom of the press and the right to privacy do not have to be combatants. The people have tasked members of the news media with the duty and the responsibility to provide information. As publishers, we must find the boundary, push it, but refuse to cross it — never selling out our readers and never publishing what we cannot verify.

If the allegations are true, Murdoch did not just cross the line — he erased it. By doing so, he has placed all of us who enjoy freedom of the press at grave risk.

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Rupert and James Murdoch are next targets as Rebekah Brooks steps down

Bloomberg reports:

News Corp. (NWSA) Chairman Rupert Murdoch and his son, James, are under mounting pressure from U.K. lawmakers to take responsibility for a phone-hacking scandal after bowing to calls for Rebekah Brooks to resign.

Some people close to the Murdoch family and News Corp.’s directors think it would make sense for Murdoch to relinquish his job as chief executive officer and stay on as chairman. Although a leadership change hasn’t been formally discussed by the board, the situation is fluid and everything is possible, said one of the people, who wouldn’t be identified because the matter isn’t public.

The resignation of Brooks, who edited the News of the World tabloid at the time of the alleged phone-hacking, marks a U-Turn for James, News Corp.’s deputy chief operating officer, and Rupert Murdoch, 80, who said last week Brooks had their support and would stay on. Murdoch yesterday backed his 38-year-old son and heir apparent, saying he had acted “as fast as he could, the moment he could.”

“It’s now about the Murdochs,” said Chris Bryant, a Labour lawmaker who called the July 6 emergency debate on the News of the World. “James Murdoch has got to answer questions about their hush money strategy. Did the board agree to it?”

The Daily Telegraph reports:

Rupert Murdoch’s daughter Elisabeth has made a “furious” attack on Rebekah Brooks’s handling of the phone hacking scandal at News International, The Daily Telegraph has learnt.

The 42-year-old is said to have privately “railed” against the News International chief executive and former editor of the News of the World.

Miss Murdoch, who is set to be given a seat on the board of her father’s News Corp empire, told friends that Mrs Brooks had “fucked the company”.

Her remarks represent the first breach in the show of solidarity around Mrs Brooks by the Murdoch family.

The Guardian reports:

It is not yet clear exactly why Brooks’s resignation after 22 years at the company was accepted by the Murdochs, who had so far steadfastly stood by her during the crisis. This despite calls for her to go from the leaders of all the main political parties, including the prime minister, David Cameron, and the family of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, whose mobile phone was allegedly hacked by a private investigator working for the News of the World.

However, the last straw may have been Thursday night’s Newsnight interview with News International parent company News Corporation’s second largest shareholder, Saudi prince Al-Waleed bin Talal Alsaud, in which he said that if there was evidence of Brooks’s “explicit” involvement in the alleged illegal activity, “for sure she has to go, you bet she has to go”.

Nicholas Wapshott writes:

Many companies are made in the image of their boss, but none more so than News Corp. While Murdoch has been obliged to delegate at his TV network, at Fox News, and at the Fox movie division, Murdoch, a brilliant tabloid journalist, is the true editor-in-chief of his newspapers, as every editor who has worked for him knows – full disclosure: I was an executive at The Times, London, 1992-2004. As Andrew Neil, a dozen years The Sunday Times editor, wrote, “Anybody of importance reports direct to him. Normal management structures . . . do not matter.”

As an aggressive Australian alpha-male, Murdoch does not like editors who have their own ideas. In Britain, editors of The Times and The Sunday Times used to be big beasts of the political jungle, larger-than-life personalities, movers and shakers among the great and the good. Since the Murdoch takeover in 1980, faceless, unquestioning, anonymous beta editors have taken their place, and woe betide those who become well known.

“When you work for Rupert,” explained Neil, “you are a courtier.” He has “a weakness for courtiers who are fawning or obsequious.” Neil, who was “too inclined to become a public personality in my own right,” was eventually squeezed out. Michael Wolff, Murdoch’s biographer, tells the same story. “He tends to hire people who are grateful for the chance,” he wrote. “He never seems to be surrounded by the brightest bulbs, the ‘A’ team.”

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Phone hacking fallout: ten days that shook Britain

Jonathan Freedland writes:

This has not looked like a revolution. There have been no crowds massed overnight in Trafalgar Square, no tanks or water cannon deployed on the streets of London. And yet, in their own bloodless way, these have been the 10 days that shook Britain and shocked the world. Quietly and without violence, we have witnessed a very British revolution.

Yes, the government remains in place and Buckingham Palace is safely unstormed. Our official masters still rule over us. Nevertheless, these wild, dizzying days have carried a distinctly revolutionary echo.

One of the most famous images of the revolutions that swept eastern Europe in 1989 came from Romania, when Nicolae Ceausescu addressed a crowd in Bucharest’s main square. Suddenly, someone started booing. Then another, and another began jeering and whistling.

No one had ever heard such a noise before, least of all the dictator himself, who stared at the crowd, utterly baffled by such a show of dissent. The revolution was under way within hours, the regime toppled within days.

What happened in that moment was that the Romanian people lost their fear, instantly but completely.

Of course, Rupert Murdoch is no murderous despot. But he was feared by the very people many would have assumed were too powerful to be intimidated. From the moment late on 4 July that the Guardian reported that the News of the World had listened to, and deleted, messages left on the phone of a missing schoolgirl, Milly Dowler, that fear, accumulated over three decades, began to melt away.

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