Great news!

. . . for Rupert Murdoch. Soon he can put all that unpleasantness behind him.

The "plurality and independence of news provision" is assured!

Late update: looks like the Sky News spin-off might actually prevent total consolidation of independent news under the great god Murdoch. Maybe I'm naive but it's possible someone's heart is in the right place on this. We can only hope.

Later update: damn funny post from the Daily Mash. Yes, in a way I will be disappointed if Murdoch actually and truly divests himself of SkyNews so that Britain is spared the Fox Effect. And, yes, I do believe Murdoch is the avatar for Sauron so this must be just a ruse to trick us into laying down our arms to embrace the Orcs. Must be the PTSDs. Guilty as charged.

Even Later update: not so sure it's quite this bad.

Even LATER update: what, us worry?

The Realpolitik of Naïve

Okay – I really don’t know how sensible or horrible the “Deal in the Desert” was. Maybe on some level it made sense at the time. For the sake of argument we might grant Tony Blair this much. Its crude realpolitik sensibility made you grudgingly accept it for what it was. There was an odd dignity to Tony's unflinching prostitution: he was better playing the honest whore than the sancitmonious crusader.

Even if you accept that people in the west generally understood it was always really about the oil and just fuck the rest, it is striking how quickly we convinced ourselves - or allowed ourselves to be convinced - that 9/11 made for some kind of post-realpolitik paradigm, which our minders in government exploited to the fullest to launch their wars unhindered and unquestioned. Maybe Atrios is right: maybe Egypt has reintroduced us back to reality.

In any case, it seems likely the clock has long since run out for any distinction that would make a difference.

How it's done

An excellent dissection on a random day of how NewSpeak works.

It's a time-honoured tradition.

If you haven't, you should book-mark David Niewart: the man is a saint.

Finance is too important to be left to the financiers

An excellent film - a must see.

By and large, Inside Job accurately portrays the conflicts of interest inherent in the political, academic and financial regulatory systems. It should make anyone with a soul angry: it is especially aggravating, bordering on hilarious, to watch some high-falutin' academic-types squirm heroically, even become angry, as their whorin' ways are laid bare for all to see.

My own two cents: there was a time when the SEC listed as its core responsibilities ensuring market integrity and investor protection. If you check the SEC's current mission statement, these seems downplayed.

It used to be recognised that market integrity was important not only to facilitate the free flow of capital, but also to maintain confidence in the U.S. securities markets. It's as if there was recognition that the country's strength was tied to its reputation for observance of the rules - the rule of law. There was a geo-strategic dimension to America's reputation for the probity of its markets - sort of like respect for human rights (again - the rule of law).

It might just be a coincidence that both of these priorities - market integrity and human rights - began to founder contemporaneously on the rocks of the Reagan revolution. Perhaps it's just an accident that both culminated roughly contemporaneously with the financial crisis and Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

As for investor protection, the following is now emphasised on the SEC's website:

The world of investing is fascinating and complex, and it can be very fruitful. But unlike the banking world, where deposits are guaranteed by the federal government, stocks, bonds and other securities can lose value. There are no guarantees. That's why investing is not a spectator sport. By far the best way for investors to protect the money they put into the securities markets is to do research and ask questions.

You know what that means!

The Fed, meanwhile, seems to give a shit about the public - well, officially, at least. Their mission statement is slightly more reassuring. Among other things, they emote:

Today, the Federal Reserve's duties fall into four general areas[, among them]:

• . . . supervising and regulating banking institutions to ensure the safety and soundness of the nation's banking and financial system and to protect the credit rights of consumers
• maintaining the stability of the financial system and containing systemic risk that may arise in financial markets . . .

That's more like it!

But this guy, a self-professed acolyte of Ayn Rand, was at the helm:

"Capitalism is based on self-interest and self-esteem; it holds integrity and trustworthiness as cardinal virtues and makes them pay off in the marketplace, thus demanding that men survive by means of virtue, not vices. It is this superlatively moral system that the welfare statists propose to improve upon by means of preventative law, snooping bureaucrats, and the chronic goad of fear."

I blame Ayn Rand!

Meanwhile, Obama shows no signs of doing anything meaningful about any of the above.

Late update: as Artios notes, this just in: no indictments forthcoming. It seems, so sayeth the good Professor Coffee, there are simply too many un-indicted co-conspirators.

"The question is: do we have a shadow government, and who are those intelligent minority that is guiding us through?"

Gotta love it: Soros sees the humour, but eventually he can't help but get to the point:

"You can tell the people falsehoods, and deceive them"

This is the kind of "plurality and independence of news provision" that the Murdochs want to import into Britain.

Yes, it's "so important for our democracy."

This is news?

Long ago I reserved a special place in hell for Colin Powell.

Now Colin is publicly whining about how shocked, shocked, shocked he is that he was used like a cheap hooker by those naughty men in the CIA and DIA. And, my oh my, how shocked we all are that Curveball did not shoot straight with us.

Didn't Seymour Hersh lay this all out in painful detail pretty much as it was happening?

Never mind - go back to sleep.

It's never too late

My ongoing war against The Economist in respect of its mostly lamentable coverage of U.S. politics ebbs and flows. Lexington in particular, for the most part, was for a long time spectacularly (if not conveniently) obtuse. I charted The Economist's various crimes against rational analysis throughout the Bush years and still believe a hint of contrition is in order - given their role as enablers of the great Bush/Blair con job. But . . . life's too short.

For the most part things have improved since the departure of their previous editor, but every now and then The Economist reverts to its bad old ways. Lexington's column last week is a case in point: its suggestion that 'Dubya's "radical" plans to democratise the middle east may have been "right" in light of Tunisia, Egypt, etc., showed shades and echoes of its former gloriously shameless pandering to the extreme right in America, but although Lexington gamely tries to prostitute itself convincingly, its pandering comes off as decidely muted and half-hearted: while Lexington still ascribes to Bush the noblest of intentions (conveniently ignoring the influence of the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz axis), the reality of the results of the neocons' "democracy agenda" do not go unremarked:

"So Mr Bush is vindicated? Not so fast. Yes, those who mocked his belief in the Arab appetite for democracy were wrong; he is to be admired for championing reform and nudging autocrats towards pluralism. But keep things in proportion. The big thing Bush did in the Arab world was not to argue for an election here or a loosening of controls there. It was to send an army to conquer Iraq. Nothing that has happened in Tunisia or Egypt makes the consequences of that decision any less calamitous.

"The war poisoned the Arabs’ reaction to everything America later said or did. Iraq is now a fragile democracy, but precious few Arabs (and rather few Europeans) believe that Mr Bush invaded Iraq for democracy’s sake. Many think the non-existent weapons of mass destruction were a pretext, too. In Cairo in 2009 Lexington let a pro-reform academic, Nader Fergany, still seething six years on. “The Americans are the Mongols of the 21st century,” he said, “and now Barack Obama is trying to put the icing on this dirty cake.” Whatever they think of the freedom message, most Arabs utterly reject the messenger."

The reality for the neocons is that some in the media have developed a little with the times. Analysis these days from The Economist occasionally stumbles towards being balanced, thoughtful, even - dare I say - informed. For example, this recent entry from Lexington's blog, as shockingly naive as it is in many respects . . .

"In other words, for all its many missteps of the past two decades, America is remarkably well placed to win the war of ideas now unfolding in the Middle East. This is not because Arabs are fond of America. Most aren't, right now. But thanks to globalisation, education, satellite television and the palpable failure of the local alternatives, most Arabs (and Iranians) are fully aware of what sort of societies the Western democracies are, and they would like some of the same fresh air for themselves."

. . . seems counterbalanced - somewhat at least - by consideration of the actual facts on the ground:

"Arabs (and Iranians) look around them and see many different political systems claiming ascendancy. These range from Shia theocracy (Iran and Hizbullah), Sunni Islamism (Saudi Arabia, Hamas, al-Qaeda), secular dictatorship (Syria, Libya) and traditional monarchy (Morocco, Jordan, the Arab Gulf). But guess what? By far the strongest of the ideas currently on offer—and the one for which most Egyptians seemed to be clamouring these past few weeks—is none of the above. It is liberal democracy."

A definite improvement, but I'm not quite ready to renew my subscription just yet.

Pay no attention. Carry on.

The downside of the drama in the middle east is that it distracts from previous front page news that hasn't diminished in importance. In the UK at least, before Tunisia and Egypt intruded, it was all Murdoch, all the time. People were starting to ask some inconvenient questions, such as:

1. Why exactly does Cameron hold a private dinner with James Murdoch on 25th January? What do they discuss on the eve of the government's decision whether or not to give Daddy his heart's desire: a chunk of the British media that is even larger than the chunk he has already?

2. Meanwhile, on 21st January, Andy Coulson is finally required to accept the inevitable, even if the government can't quite take the hint, when previously-proffered tales of deniability no longer ring remotely plausible. Now, it's not just The News of the World looking decidedly dodgy: it's the police, too. Cameron's judgement increasingly appears seriously impaired. Questions start to emerge about what is really going on here. Even The Economist seems to get it that this is serious:

The hacking scandal matters because it makes it seem that, in Britain, some people are above the law, and others are content for them to be so. The truth must out.

3. Lest we forget, Murdoch and this government were a match made in hell from the beginning. And even before that, the BBC had been openly targeted as road-kill to be ground up under the wheels of Murdoch's triumphal chariot.

So many dots to connect, so few people paying attention.

Presumably, the government couldn't be happier with developments in the middle east - possibly for reasons having little to do with the inherent benefits of liberty and democracy.

Late update: on the off chance that you, dear reader, are in America, where irony is missing and presumed dead, forgive me for bludgeoning you with the obvious: as I pointed out in this earlier post, that the Murdochs would presume to lecture us on how the BBC, of all things, is what Orwell warned us about provides one of the all-time great examples of boundless chutzpah (even by Fox News standards!) mixed with raging sanctimoniousness, ladled over with delusional self-pity and topped with delicious dollops of supreme irony. Yum!

Later update: definitely not looking good for the coppers.

Omar's our man

Although I remain inexpert on Egypt, I can't help but remember the words "rendition" and "Egypt" being used in the same sentence quite a lot over the past decade. I don't know if this has anything to do with the U.S. government's tepid non-opposition to Egyptian regime change: it may just be a coincidence. But then along comes Omar Sulemein, Mubarek's first-ever deputy and apparent successor: that name rang a bell and I did a quick google. Yep, this is the man we want for Eqypt:

Ron Suskind, author of the book The One Percent Doctrine, called Suleiman the "hit man" for the Mubarak regime. He told ABC News that when the CIA asked Suleiman for a DNA sample from a relative of Al Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Suleiman offered the man's whole arm instead.

"He's a charitable man, friendly," said Suskind. "He tortures only people that he doesn't know."

I may not know a lot about Egypt, but I'm learning more, and I've read Suskind and seen him speak. I've no reason to doubt him.

Look's like the west is sticking to the same old game-plan. It's worked so well so far.

Late update: Meanwhile, Cheney weighs in, predictably, with kind words for Mubarak.

Nice to have the company

Thank you, Common Cause. And thank you, NYT, for - finally (at last!) - shedding a little light on the travesty of letting these clowns continue to run amok on the Court.

It was getting lonely standing out here yelling at the cars. Nice to have the company.

Can we impeach them yet? The Citizens United decision stinks more with each passing day.

Like momma used to say . . .

. . . there are a lot of people in heaven who may have had the right of way. Josh and my momma appear to have something in common:

"You walk out into the street without looking for traffic and get run over. Your fault. Now another example. You look one way then the other and then walk into the street and get run over. Not your fault? Maybe not. But who cares? Your problem. You're still run over. And maybe both ways wasn't enough. Maybe you needed to look one way, the other and then back again. Not your fault doesn't make it not you problem."

. . . and so it goes for Israel's hapless foreign policy, and this assumes a maxed-out charitable view rating.

Very Late Update: right on cue, Iran sails right up the Suez Canal. Not to worry - just a coincidence, I'm sure!

Don't do it

Usually I exhort Brits not to emulate American policies but, as this commentary convincingly suggests, it's hard not to state the inverse when it comes to current fiscal and economic policy.

And, hard as it is to admit, what is happening now to the British economy is exactly what Gordon Brown warned us about.

Okay, so I don't know much about Egypt

But it seems I know more about the middle east in general than this guy.

Late update: this episode provides instructive insight on the mind that is Blair:

Mubarak: good because he preserved the "cold peace" with Israel. The west should proudly admit its willing engagement with and support of this regime. What Mubarak did to stay in power is not the west's problem. The Muslim Brotherhood might step into the vacuum, and we don't want that. Better to keep it bottled up. Let that rage build (be sure to ignore where Mohammed Atta came from).

Saddam: bad man. Killed his own people (ignore use on Iraqi civilians of U.S.-supplied chemical agents intended for 14-year old Iranian conscripts; ignore the CIA's tacit approval of same; and above all ignore all that stuff I said about launching chemical weapons in 45 minutes).

Blair: am I plain stupid, or just supremely "situational"?

Late, late update: God help me, Caldwell gets it exactly right. The hilarity of the neo-cons' middle east "democracy agenda" comes glaringly into focus. I'll have to look into what the PNAC crowd are saying about Egypt. That'll be a hoot.