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He retains his position as deputy chief operating officer of newscorp - but instead of a Milan/London base where he was exec chair for newsint, he'll be in New York where he will "assume a variety of essential cororate leadership mandates, with particular focus on important pay-tv businesses and broader international operations."
I'm interested in the fact that his old brother, lachlan (who was previously groomed as the heir apparent for newscorp until his sudden resignation in 2005) was the man at rupert's side last week for the sun on sunday build-up.
It's a pretty big deal as far as the UK press is concerned - this is the first time since 1969 that a murdoch family member hasn't had legal and direct control as a manager of their press assets in this country.
Naturally it's not being spun as a defeat for the sharply tailored mogul, rather an opportunity to do bigger and better things - just so long as those things are 5600 kilometres away...
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Yeah I do take the time to read Fisk's articles on the Independent website, given his long tenure out in the middle east he must be one of the most & best informed western journalists in regards to events in the middle east.
Doesn't seem to do much journalism anymore, mostly comment in the Indy and speaking tours. His contact book must still be insanely big, though.
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His contact book must still be insanely big, though.
Sadly, plenty of them are probably dead.
Best thing I remember him writing was from Beruit when he was on The Times. They printed his cable verbatim, including the commentary he was giving about ducking under the desk as shells flew by.
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What happens if you say the unsayable.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/feb/29/lady-tonge-lib-dem-israel
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Clegg said: "These remarks were wrong at a time when negotiations are still going on. The pro-Israel lobby and the public have been let down by both sides because Tonge has acted in a reckless and provocative manner. After todays disruption, I urge both sides to put aside the rhetoric get round the negotiating table, and stop it happening again.
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why mental? just saw it, it's good.
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Sadly, plenty of them are probably dead.
Best thing I remember him writing was from Beruit when he was on The Times. They printed his cable verbatim, including the commentary he was giving about ducking under the desk as shells flew by.
Yeah, he broke the news of the Sabra & Shatila massacres whilst he was at the Times. Here's why he left the Times (piece includes interesting details about what it's like to work for a Murdoch paper):
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/robert-fisk-why-i-had-to-leave-the-times-2311569.html
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The problem with investigating any reports coming out of Syria is that they are very difficult to verify, as the Guardian, BBC WS etc have stated in all the reports on these claims. There is no free press in Syria, no freedom of movement for foreign press, and the Syrian government has a well-documented history, going back at least 30 years, of brutal suppression of opposition, armed or otherwise, regardless of the consequences to its own citizens.The Syrian government still denies that it massacred 20 000 + people in Hama in 1982, whilst putting down an armed rebellion by the Muslim Brotherhood. There are very few details about the rebellion itself, other than the fact that it was armed, and that it resulted in the deaths of many government officials - but the suppression of the rebellion involved the use of armour & heavy artillery, which was used to level the city - similar to Grozny. This was confirmed by the few foreign correspondents & diplomats that were able to reach Hama during the assault.To call a concern that the Syrian government is using exactly these same tactics (artilley & armour deployed against urban areas) in Homs & other cities 'hysterical', when, on the rare occasions when foreign correspondents have been able to access Syria they have seen exactly that - heavy weapons being fired into built-up areas, with inevitably high civilian casualties, is ridiculous.
Yet Sharmine Narwani was able to do better than uncritically quoting the UN and SOHR. She covered the basic journalism better than these well resourced media organs.
"The VDC -- another of the UN's OHCHR sources for casualty counts -- alleges that 6,399 civilians and 1,680 army defectors were killed in Syria during the period from 15 March 2011 to 15 February 2012. All security forces killed in Syria during the past 11 months were "defectors?" Not a single soldier, policeman, or intelligence official was killed in Syria except those forces who opposed the regime? This is the kind of mindless narrative of this conflict that continues unchecked. Worse yet, this exact VDC statistic is included in the latest UN report on Syria issued last week."
-- http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/questioning-syrian-%E2%80%9Ccasualty-list%E2%80%9DIf you've seen John Pilger's superb documentary "The War You Don't See", you'll be familiar with the same ridiculous refrain from journalists, war after war, that they should have questioned the briefings and evidence.
"Ironically, like other media that dismissed highly credible scientific analyses of the death toll in Iraq - published in one of the world's most respected medical journals, the Lancet - the BBC has been reporting hundreds of deaths in Homs based on anecdotal evidence and highly questionable sources. Robert Dreyfuss comments in The Nation:
‘The killings in Syria are ugly, but no doubt wildly exaggerated. Nearly all, repeat all, of the information about the violence in Syria is coming from a handful of exiled Syrian opposition groups backed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and various Western powers. Did 200 people really die in Homs this past weekend, conveniently just on the eve of the UNSC debate [on the resolution]? Who knows? The only source for the fishy information, though ubiquitously quoted in the New York Times, the wire services, the network news and elsewhere, are the suspect Syrian opposition groups, who have axes galore to grind.’A key source for BBC reporting has long been the British-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights. Aisling Byrne writes in the Asian Times:
‘Of the three main sources for all data on numbers of protesters killed and numbers of people attending demonstrations - the pillars of the narrative - all are part of the “regime change” alliance. The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, in particular, is reportedly funded through a Dubai-based fund with pooled (and therefore deniable) Western-Gulf money…. What appears to be a nondescript British-based organization, the Observatory has been pivotal in sustaining the narrative of the mass killing of thousands of peaceful protesters using inflated figures, “facts”, and often exaggerated claims of “massacres” and even recently “genocide”.’Just as deep media scepticism in response to the peer-reviewed Lancet studies on Iraq was near-universal, so blind faith in the claims of Syrian ‘activist groups’ has become the accepted norm."
-- http://www.medialens.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=666:un-travesty-resolutions-of-mass-destruction-part-2&catid=25:alerts-2012&Itemid=69Michel Chossudovsky, Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the University of Ottawa wrote:
"There is certainly cause for social unrest and mass protest in Syria: unemployment has increased in recent year, social conditions have deteriorated, particularly since the adoption in 2006 of sweeping economic reforms under IMF guidance. The IMF's "economic medicine" includes austerity measures, a freeze on wages, the deregulation of the financial system, trade reform and privatization.
...Moreover, in contrast to Egypt and Tunisia, in Syria there is considerable popular support for President Bashar Al Assad. The large rally in Damascus on March 29, "with tens of thousands of supporters" (Reuters) of President Al Assad is barely mentioned. Yet in an unusual twist, the images and video footage of several pro-government events were used by the Western media to convince international public opinion that the President was being confronted by mass anti-government rallies.
What is clear from these initial reports is that many of the demonstrators were not demonstrators but terrorists involved in premeditated acts of killing and arson. The title of the Israeli news report summarizes what happened: Syria: Seven Police Killed, Buildings Torched in Protests.
The Daraa "protest movement" on March 18 had all the appearances of a staged event involving, in all likelihood, covert support to Islamic terrorists by Mossad and/or Western intelligence. Government sources point to the role of radical Salafist groups (supported by Israel)
Other reports have pointed to the role of Saudi Arabia in financing the protest movement.
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Since the Soviet-Afghan war, Western intelligence agencies as well as Israel's Mossad have consistently used various Islamic terrorist organizations as "intelligence assets". Both Washington and its indefectible British ally have provided covert support to "Islamic terrorists" in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo and Libya, etc. as a means to triggering ethnic strife, sectarian violence and political instability. The staged protest movement in Syria is modelled on Libya. The insurrection in Eastern Libya is integrated by the Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) which is supported by MI6 and the CIA. The ultimate objective of the Syria protest movement, through media lies and fabrications, is to create divisions within Syrian society as well as justify an eventual "humanitarian intervention".
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The purpose of this web of media deceit, namely outright fabrications --where soldiers are being killed by police and "government snipers"-- is to deny the existence of armed terrorist groups. The later are integrated by snipers and "plain clothed terrorists" who are shooting at the police, the Syrian armed forces and local residents.
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While the government bears heavy responsibility for its mishandling of the military-police operation, including the deaths of civilians, the reports confirm that the armed terrorist groups had also opened fire on protesters and local residents. The casualties are then blamed on the armed forces and the police and the Bashar Al Assad government is portrayed by "the international community" as having ordered countless atrocities.
-- http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24591Jeremy Salt, associate professor in Middle Eastern History and Politics at Bilkent University, Ankara wrote:
"There is no doubt that the bulk of people demonstrating in Syria want peaceful transition to a democratic form of government. Neither is there any doubt that armed groups operating from behind the screen of the demonstrations have no interest in reform. They want to destroy the government.
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The armed groups are well armed and well organised. Large shipments of weapons have been smuggled into Syria from Lebanon and Turkey. They include pump action shotguns, machine guns, Kalashnikovs,RPG launchers, Israeli-made hand grenades and numerous other explosives. It is not clear who is providing these weapons but someone is, and someone is paying for them. Interrogation of captured members of armed gangs points in the direction of Saad al Hariri's Future Movement. Hariri is a front man for the US and Saudi Arabia, with influence spreading well beyond Lebanon.
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Armed opposition to the regime largely seems to be sponsored by the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. In 1982 the government ruthlessly crushed an uprising initiated by the Brotherhood in Hama. Many thousands died and part of the city was destroyed. The Brotherhood has two prime objectives: the destruction of the Baathist government and the destruction of the secular state in favor of an Islamic system. It is almost palpably thirsting for revenge.
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The reporting by the western media of the situations in Libya and Syria has been appalling. NATO intervention in Libya has been the cause of massive destruction and thousands of deaths. The war, following the invasion of Iraq, is yet another major international crime committed by the governments of the US, Britain and France. The city of Sirte has been bombarded day and night for two weeks without the western media paying any attention to the heavy destruction and loss of life that must have followed. The western media has made no attempt to check reports coming out of Sirte of the bombing of civilian building and the killing of hundreds of people. The only reason can be that the ugly truth could well derail the whole NATO operation.
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In Syria the same media has followed the same pattern of misreporting and disinformation. It has ignored or skated over the evidence of widespread killings by armed gangs. It has invited its audience to disbelieve the claims of government and believe the claims of rebels, often made in the name of human rights organisations based in Europe or the US. Numerous outright lies have been told, as they were told in Libya and as they were told ahead of the attack on Iraq. Some at least have been exposed. People said to have been killed by state security forces have turned up alive. The brothers of Zainab al Husni claimed she has been kidnapped by security forces, murdered and her body dismembered. This lurid account, spread by Al Jazeera and Al Arabiyya amongst other outlets, was totally false. She is still alive although now, of course, the propaganda tack is to claim that this is not really her but a double. Al Jazeera, the Guardian and the BBC have distinguished themselves by their blind support of anything that discredits the Syrian government. The same line is being followed by the mainstream media in the US. Al Jazeera, in particular, having distinguished itself with its reporting of the Egyptian revolution, has lost all credibility as an independent Arab world news channel.
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In seeking to destroy the Syrian government the Muslim Brotherhood has a goal in common with the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia, whose paranoia about Shia Islam reached fever pitch with the uprising in Bahrain. Wikileaks revealed how impatient it was for the US to attack Iran. A substitute target is the destruction of the strategic relationship between Iran, Syria and Hizbullah. The US and the Saudis may want to destroy the Alawi-dominated Baathist regime in Damascus for slightly different reasons, but the important thing is that they do want to destroy it.
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While concentrating on the violence of the Syrian regime, the US, European governments (especially Britain) have totally ignored the violence directed against it. Their own infinitely greater violence, of course, in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and other places, doesn't even come into the picture. Turkey has joined their campaign against Syria with relish, going even further than they have in confronting the Syrian regime. In the space of a few months Turkey's 'zero problem' regional policy has been upended in the most inchoate manner. Turkey eventually lent its support to the NATO attack on Libya, after initially holding back. It has antagonised Iran by its policy on Syria and by agreeing, despite strong domestic opposition, to host a US radar missile 'defence' installation clearly directed against Iran. The Americans say its data will be shared with Israel, which has refused to apologise for the attack on the Mavi Marmara, plunging Israeli-Turkish relations into near crisis. So from 'zero problems', Turkey now has a regional policy full of problems with Israel, Syria and Iran.
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The Syrian people are entitled to demand democracy and to be given it, but in this way and at this cost? Even now, an end to the killing and negotiations on political reform is surely the way forward, not violence which threatens to tear the country apart. Unfortunately, violence and not a negotiated settlement is what too many people inside Syria want and what too many governments watching and waiting for their opportunity also want. No Syrian can ultimately gain from this, whatever they presently think. Their country is being driven towards a sectarian civil war, perhaps foreign intervention and certainly chaos on an even greater scale than we are now seeing. There will be no quick recovery if the state collapses or can be brought down. Like Iraq, and probably like Libya, looking at the present situation, Syria would enter a period of bloody turmoil that could last for years. Like Iraq, again, it would be completely knocked out of the ring as a state capable of standing up for Arab interests, which means, of course, standing up to the US and Israel.
-- http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29321.htmContrast the coverage of Homs to that of Fallujah:
"Yet on these occasions, the western media responded very differently to the way that it has in Homs. In Fallujah, western reporters were embedded with the besiegers not the besieged. In Gaza, most reporters watched the bombardment from southern Israel.Then, no-one talked about ‘brave’ resistance fighters; no one broadcast poignant messages from Gazans or Fallujans asking for the world to come and help them or described what was taking place at Fallujah and Gaza as a ‘genocide’, a ‘horror’ or an ‘existential hell’.
Fallujah, we were told, was the lair of the terrorist wild man Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi; a lawless and diseased city infested with jihadists, ‘ foreign fighters’ and al Qaeda fanatics that could only be tamed by violence, where brave young marines would have their manhood and willpower tested.
Gaza was similarly portrayed as the fiefdom of Hamas, a wild place inhabited by Muslim fundamentalists, suicide bombers and terrorist fanatics who fired missiles at Israeli schoolchildren for no reason, where it was difficult if not impossible for the Israeli army to distinguish between civilians and the fighters who concealed themselves amongst them.
Operation Cast Lead might be ‘heavy-handed’, as a few daring commentators suggested, but it was nevertheless understandable. After all, what else could Israel do? And what else could the US Army do in Fallujah, faced with diehard religious fanatics who were impervious to democracy and who – it was sometimes suggested, wanted to die?
There were no news anchormen and reporters demanding international action to stop these assaults. Nor were western politicians standing up to condemn atrocities and crimes against humanity. When Israel was raining bombs all over Lebanon – deliberately targeting civilians in an attempt to terrorise the population into turning against Hezbollah – Britain and the US vetoed UN resolutions that might have brought the war to an end, thereby deliberately extending the violence in order to allow Israel to achieve its war aims.
Yet no newspaper or reporter suggested that these countries had given Israel a ‘license to kill’, as many commentators have accused Russia and China of doing in Syria.
In pointing out out these discrepancies, I’m not trying to argue that the Syrian assault on Homs is somehow more legitimate or acceptable – though it is worth noting that there are armed rebels in Homs and that they also have mortars – something that I have yet to hear from any major western media outlet."
-- http://www.infernalmachine.co.uk/?p=1274FWIW, Robert Fisk has been living on Syria's doorstep (or backyard, depending on how you look at it), and his analysis of the situation is here:
Well worth a read, if you give a shit.
"The trouble is that the West has been so deluged with stories and lectures and think-tank nonsense about the ghastly Iran and the unfaithful Iraq and the vicious Syria and the frightened Lebanon that it is almost impossible to snap off these delusional pictures and realise that Assad is not alone. That is not to praise Assad or to support his continuation. But it's real."
The trouble is that FIsk doesn't see the "think tank nonsense" as a deliberate Western ploy to destabilise Arab regimes:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/us-secretly-backed-syrian-opposition-groups-cables-released-by-wikileaks-show/2011/04/14/AF1p9hwD_story.htmlThe West is fixated on getting its way in Syria and thus the "delusional pictures" aren't actually delusional as that removes their deliberate intent from the whole affair.
Former Nato chief Wesley Clark recalls:
"After recounting how a Pentagon source had told him weeks after 9/11 of the Pentagon’s plan to attack Iraq notwithstanding its non-involvement in 9/11, this is how Clark described the aspirations of the “coup” being plotted by Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and what he called “a half dozen other collaborators from the Project for the New American Century”:
Six weeks later, I saw the same officer, and asked: “Why haven’t we attacked Iraq? Are we still going to attack Iraq?” He said: “Sir, it’s worse than that. He said – he pulled up a piece of paper off his desk – he said: “I just got this memo from the Secretary of Defense’s office. It says we’re going to attack and destroy the governments in 7 countries in five years – we’re going to start with Iraq, and then we’re going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.”Clark said the aim of this plot was this: “They wanted us to destabilize the Middle East, turn it upside down, make it under our control.” He then recounted a conversation he had had ten years earlier with Paul Wolfowitz — back in 1991 — in which the then-number-3-Pentagon-official, after criticizing Bush 41 for not toppling Saddam, told Clark: “But one thing we did learn [from the Persian Gulf War] is that we can use our military in the region – in the Middle East – and the Soviets won’t stop us. And we’ve got about 5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet regimes – Syria, Iran [sic], Iraq – before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us.” Clark said he was shocked by Wolfowitz’s desires because, as Clark put it: “the purpose of the military is to start wars and change governments? It’s not to deter conflicts?”"
-- http://www.salon.com/2011/11/26/wes_clark_and_the_neocon_dream/singleton/ -
Doesn't seem to do much journalism anymore, mostly comment in the Indy and speaking tours. His contact book must still be insanely big, though.
Indeed, I still think his book, 'Pity the Nation', is one of the finest observations of the Lebanese civil war ever written.
Sadly, plenty of them are probably dead.
Best thing I remember him writing was from Beruit when he was on The Times. They printed his cable verbatim, including the commentary he was giving about ducking under the desk as shells flew by.
Yeah it was certainly dramatic and caught my imagination.
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"The trouble is that the West has been so deluged with stories and lectures and think-tank nonsense about the ghastly Iran and the unfaithful Iraq and the vicious Syria and the frightened Lebanon that it is almost impossible to snap off these delusional pictures and realise that Assad is not alone. That is not to praise Assad or to support his continuation. But it's real."
The trouble is that FIsk doesn't see the "think tank nonsense" as a deliberate Western ploy to destabilise Arab regimes:I don't know about Fisk, but if the point is that there is duplicity in the Middle East, then I agree. The West, China & Russia are all engaged in nefarious activities to either destabilise other people's dictators, or prop up their own.
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Yeah I do take the time to read Fisk's articles on the Independent website, given his long tenure out in the middle east he must be one of the most & best informed western journalists in regards to events in the middle east.