How The Media Acted As Accomplices to the Sex Crimes of Harvey Weinstein (and of many others)

The American Media is Like the Germans: Either At Your Feet or At Your Throat.

One aspect of American (and not only American) media is starkly illustrated [1] by the Harvey Weinstein affair, and that is its tendency to either be fawning sycophants or a lynch mob. That is, a former darling can be turned on suddenly and ferociously. The target can be the same person previously adored, or a foreign nation or ruler when the "interests" of the attacking media's nation warrant a reversal of attitude. Examples of this are the reversal of political polarity from positive to negative when the Shah of Iran was toppled and the Shiite theocrats took over; when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait; and the Soviet Union, which went from enemy from 1917 to 1942, when it became friend, then back to enemy from 1945 until 1989 when Gorbachev surrendered the client states of Eastern Europe. (The S.U. ultimately shattered into pieces in 1991.)

This is not to say Weinstein doesn't deserve strong condemnation. It SHOULD raise questions about the media's former sycophancy towards him. Indeed, it aided and abetted his abuses of and attacks on women. And even though that is obvious, the media has managed to totally ignore that aspect of the issue. Here's just some of the proof of media complicity in Weinstein's crimes:

Buried in a long New Yorker article by Ronan Farrow about Weinstein's sexual assaults and coercive behavior was evidence of media complicity in aiding and abetting his crimes. How witting or clueless his media enablers were has not been revealed by the media.  Here are excerpts with key words highlighted by me in bold:

Virtually all of the people I spoke with told me that they were frightened of retaliation. “If Harvey were to discover my identity, I’m worried that he could ruin my life,” one former employee told me. Many said that they had seen Weinstein’s associates confront and intimidate those who crossed him, and feared that they would be similarly targeted. Four actresses, including Mira Sorvino and Rosanna Arquette, told me they suspected that, after they rejected Weinstein’s advances or complained about them to company representatives, Weinstein had them removed from projects or dissuaded people from hiring them. Multiple sources said that Weinstein frequently bragged about planting items in media outlets about those who spoke against him; these sources feared that they might be similarly targeted. Several pointed to Gutierrez’s case, in 2015: after she went to the police, negative items discussing her sexual history and impugning her credibility began rapidly appearing in New York gossip pages.

“This wasn’t a one-off. This wasn’t a period of time,” an executive who worked for Weinstein for many years told me. “This was ongoing predatory behavior towards women—whether they consented or not.”

And:  

“Textbook sexual harassment” was how Nestor [a young female employee] described Weinstein’s behavior to me. “It’s a pretty clear case of sexual harassment when your superior, the C.E.O., asks one of their inferiors, a temp, to have sex with them, essentially in exchange for mentorship.” She recalled refusing his advances at least a dozen times. “ ‘No’ did not mean ‘no’ to him,” she said. “I was very aware of how inappropriate it was. But I felt trapped.”

Throughout the breakfast, she said, Weinstein interrupted their conversation to yell into his cell phone, enraged over a spat that Amy Adams, a star in the Weinstein movie “Big Eyes,” was having in the press. Afterward, Weinstein told Nestor to keep an eye on the news cycle, which he promised would be spun in his favor. Later in the day, there were indeed negative news items about his opponents, and Weinstein stopped by Nestor’s desk to be sure that she’d seen them.

By that point, Nestor recalled, “I was very afraid of him. And I knew how well connected he was."

Notice that Farrow and The New Yorker protect the identities of the media organs that willingly, probably eagerly, ran whatever malicious propaganda Weinstein chose to plant with them. Media people stick together. They are a tightknit fraternity (except when it came to Michael Hastings, for one, who was ostracized for reporting the contemptuous attitude of General Stanley McCrystal, and the horrible example he set for his staff, towards his commander-in-chief, the president of the United States, and the rest of the civilian leadership, the alleged superiors to the military, and who have been accessories after the fact in Hastings assassination by refusing to report the obvious facts, much less investigate it), who in general have an all-around non-aggression pact with each other (excepting Murdoch's minions, who gleefully attack other major media organs, because like all fascists, they consider themselves the only legitimate pretenders to power). There is also the desire not to close the doors to potential future employers on the part of the reporters and commentators. They are all careerists who rely on friendly relations to gain exposure for themselves. So both institutional and personal factors create a system of media self-protection. Once in awhile these media actors put on a show of self-reflection, self-analysis, self-pseudo-criticism, which are invariably acts of self-protection, justification, exoneration, sprinkled with what the CIA dubs limited hang-outs, that ism, dribbling out seeming "revelations" while keeping the most damaging facts and truths well-hidden.

Despite the efforts of The New Yorker to protect the guilty, we know from other sources (in this case the WNYC radio program On The Media, October 13, 2017) that in the most egregious case, the attack on    the woman who instigated the New York City police criminal investigation of Weinstein, to discredit her, Weinstein's media accomplices were Murdoch's minions at his reactionary rag New York Post "news"paper, specifically Page Six, a tawdry "gossip" and political attack column. Fitting that it should be so. Murdoch has long been an employer of sexual predators, including but not limited to Roger Ailes, the evil, Mephistophelian founder of Murdoch's vile agitpropaganda pseudo-news channel, Fox "News," and the former top on-air propagandist on that network, Bill "SHUT UP!" O'Reilly. Among his numerous major crimes, Ailes organized the rehabilitation of the image of the loathsome Richard Nixon in 1968, helping elect Nixon president, from which position Nixon rained bombs down on Vietnam and destroyed democracy in Chile with a CIA-Pentagon coup, among numerous other crimes against humanity, domestic and foreign. To be sure, the CIA played the crucial role in electing Nixon, first by assassinating Martin Luther King, Jr., in April 1968, prompting justified rioting by blacks which played straight into Nixon's racist "law and order" campaign theme (code for "repress the blacks") but especially in June by murdering Robert Kennedy, who would have defeated Nixon in the November election had the CIA not eliminated him. (As it was, Nixon barely edged the ultimate Democratic candidate by less than a percentage point, the loathsome Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson's vice president, who discredited himself with liberal voters by his sycophantic support for Johnson's Vietnam war.)

Just to return to the relatively trivial matter of a disgusting movie industry poohbah abusing his power, and the major corporate media protecting him: NBC refused to run Ronan Farrow's story about Weinstein, so he took it to The New Yorker.

1] Illustrated, but ignored by that same media, of course.

2] "From Aggressive Overtures to Sexual Assault: Harvey Weinstein’s Accusers Tell Their Stories: Multiple women share harrowing accounts of sexual assault and harassment by the film executive," By Ronan Farrow, The New Yorker magazine, October 10, 2017

Sex criminals Weinstein, O'Reilly, Roger Ailes- beneath their politics, birds of a feather.

"HEY! Who's molesting who!" Hillary Clinton just can't keep her hands off Harvey Weinstein. (Hint: She loves his money. I mean, his "donations" because he "supports what she stands for" and "the values of the Democratic Party." Yeah, right.)

"Stupid bitch, here's how you give a blowjob!" Victim of multiple misunderstandings Bill O'Reilly was merely conducting one-on-one sex ed lessons.

Who could resist sexy Roger Ailes! We sure do miss Rupert Murdoch's propaganda master, the man who invented the "new Nixon" of 1968. (Meet the New Nixon, same as the Old Nixon.)

And give credit where credit is due: The Man who empowered the sex fiends and spreaders of socially destructive reactionary agitprop Ailes and O'Reilly, the Global Master Propagandist himself, Rupert Murdoch, the Ageless One.

Evidence Anthony Weiner May Have Been Targeted To Sabotage Clinton's Election Campaign

Smack in the middle of a Wall Street Journal article about Anthony Weiner's sentencing hearing for his conviction on the Federal charge of "transferring obscene material to a minor" (a 15-year-old teenager) were these startling paragraphs:

Mr. Weiner's attorneys, Arlo Devlin-Brown and Erin Monju, have said the teenager targeted Mr. Weiner for personal profit and "to influence the U.S. presidential election." On Wednesday, Mr. Devlin-Brown declined to comment on the prosecutors' filing. [The prosecutors' filing that called for a prison sentence of 21 to 27 months for Weiner.]

The public exposure in September 2016 of Mr. Weiner's conduct with the teenager triggered a re-examination, days before the U.S. presidential election, of the federal probe concerning the private email server used by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. [Translation: Provided the FBI with a pretext for reigniting the Clinton secret email server scandal.] FBI agents seized a laptop from Mr. Weiner that had been used by both him and his wife, Mrs. Clinton's longtime aide Huma Abedin.

But prosecutors wrote in their filing that the teenager's motivation should be irrelevant to his sentence. [That's convenient. Sweep it under the rug.] ("Prison proposed for Weiner," Wall Street Journal, September 21, 2017, page A12A.)

So those who comb through media with a fine-tooth comb may have come across this tantalizing hint of a plot to sabotage the Clinton campaign.

It was just ten days before the November 7, 2016 presidential election when then-FBI secret police chief James Comey hurled a grenade into the Clinton campaign, announcing a "reinvestigation" of "new" (actually just copies of previously-obtained and scrutinized ) emails from Clinton's computer server. Clinton had been ahead of Trump by a comfortable 14% in polls, in the wake of the revelation of a video of Trump boasting of sexually assaulting women by grabbing their genitals and forcibly kissing them. Strangely, the churning up of the previously-closed investigation into Clinton's circumvention of Federal record-keeping rules by using a private computer server in her home to conduct her State Department business, caused her lead over Trump to evaporate, illustrating the fickleness and irrationality of a segment of the public.

When Comey had previously announced the conclusion of the lengthy investigation, he pronounced that no crime had been committed, but also publicly excoriated Clinton for her action, which allegedly jeopardized "classified" information. Clinton of course has been thoroughly dishonest throughout the scandal.

The New York City field office of the FBI was furious with Comey's decision not to recommend criminal charges to the Department of "Justice," which brings Federal prosecutions of crimes. Their anger at the decision to let Clinton off the hook has been reported by various bourgeois media sources. This office is staffed and run by rightwing extremists, reactionary political fanatics.

The FBI New York City field office is the largest in the U.S. it has long indulged in nefarious conspiracies against both politicians and against any and all people and groups considered "leftwing." They are a lawless gang that wiretaps, bugs, burglarizes and steals routinely without any warrants, targeting people they don't like. Mail is monitored and sometimes stolen, including certified mail. (I have suffered all of this personally, to my detriment.) This FBI office has long been tasked with carrying out political skulduggery, including espionage and counterespionage. It is tasked with spying on the UN, and the UN missions of various nations, including Cuba, an object of malign assault by the U.S. since 1959, including all manner of terrorism, sabotage, murder, economic warfare and espionage.

Rudolph Giuliani, formerly NYC mayor, and previous to that the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York (i.e. chief Federal prosecutor for much of New York State, including Manhattan, the key borough of New York City where high finance and media are centered) has maintained close connections, dating to his days as U.S. attorney, with the reactionary elements of the FBI field office. He has frequently been an conduit for unattributed "information" from those FBI agents, manipulating public opinion and trying to cause certain political outcomes.

Giuliani was and is a Trump ally, before and after Trump's "election" by the Electoral College. (Trump lost the "popular" vote to Clinton by 2.9 million votes, which Trump claimed were all illegal aliens voting unlawfully.) After Trump assumed the presidency, Giuliani went on television to boast about how he crafted Trump's order banning Muslims from 7 countries entry to the U.S. to better withstand legal challenge. Giuliani's name has repeatedly been publicly bruited about as a possible Trump choice for high government office in the Trump regime.

So IF Weiner was set up, the primary suspects have to be Giuliani and his political hit squad inside the FBI's New York City field office. (Weiner lives in NYC.) Weiner's sexual compulsion, and his vulnerability, was well known. It would have been simple to recruit a malleable teenager to be their pawn in a plot aimed at Clinton, using Weiner as a patsy and collateral victim of their scheme. Others have commented that Comey's hand was forced by the NYC FBI office to go public with the "new" emails taken off the shared laptop of Weiner and Abedin. FBI agents in New York could have "leaked" (planted) the news of finding Clinton State department emails on the Weiner/Abedin laptop, along with derogatory comments about Comey, had Comey not acted. Or they could have fed the information to Giuliani, who could have gone on television (as he often does) and reveal it.
Now, where is the story on what information Weiner's attorneys have to substantiate their claim? (Hel-lo, corporate propaganda system!)

 

















  

Trashy NYC Tabloids Had Great Fun Mocking Weiner

With Juvenile Headlines

Background: Anthony Weiner was a U.S. Congressman representing part of Brooklyn (one of five boroughs of New York City in New York State) when he was publicly exposed as having a habit of sending images of his penis to strange women via the Internet. Driven from office, he attempted a political comeback by running for Mayor of New York City in 2013.

But the establishment media and the shadowy power structure weren't through with Weiner yet.
He actually wasn't doing badly in the polls when he was outed as continuing the behavior that cost him his previous office. This ended his chances of being elected Mayor.

Then came Abedin divorcing him, and the criminal case around the 15-year-old.

The UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter was another victim of a sex trap. A cop pretended online to be a teenage girl, and exchanged sexual messages with Ritter. That was enough to arrest and convict him. In his case also his sexual proclivities were already known. Ritter's crime was contradicting the Bush II and media propaganda campaign that falsely asserted that Iraq still had "weapons of mass destruction." Ritter begged to differ, and could speak with authority.

Expecting men not to be sexually attracted to teenage girls is fighting biology. Before "civilization," life expectancy might be 25 years. People mated at puberty. Even today, in many societies girls are married off in their teens. I think that is not good, and people should evolve out of such practices- and best not to trade sex talk with teenagers, even imaginary ones. In the U.S., the thought itself is a crime, since "attempted" crime is criminal. And the Supreme Court, in an infamous case, affirmed that possession of a video of pre-pubescent girls in swimsuits dancing "suggestively" is a felony- namely possession of "child pornography." The Clinton regime took that one all the way to the high court to enforce that Saudi-style conviction, and set a precedent for extreme repression that comes in handy as yet another weapon against people who run afoul of the government.

The Wall Street Journal is, as its title makes clear, a newspaper for financiers and businessmen. Its editorials and opinion pieces are consistently hard-core reactionary, but the reporting sections are more or less normal for a U.S. establishment newspaper. Rupert Murdoch bought its parent company, Dow Jones, from the Bancroft family and promptly put its website behind a paywall.

Oh You KRAAAZY Ex-Congressman, You!

(Anthony Weiner, he of the uncontrollable sexual compulsion. "SAD!" as a certain President of the U.S. would say.)

Medical Oddity Roger Ailes Finally Dies at Age 77

In a case of an unexplained medical miracle, Roger Ailes lived to age 77 without a human heart. Scientists have long been at a loss to explain this phenomenon. One theory holds that since Ailes had ice water in his veins and not blood, no heart was necessary to sustain life.

Ailes, better known as a lifelong rightwing political operative and propaganda master, made his first major contribution to making life on earth worse for the human race by helping get Richard Nixon into the White House through his work as a media svengali for Nixon during the 1968 presidential campaign. Later he became a key henchman to evil reactionary global agit-propaganda czar Rupert Murdoch, a verminous lifeform that arose in Australia. Ailes is credited as the mastermind of Murdoch's Fox "News" channel, a platform for ranting reactionary disinformation and agit-propaganda.

Ailes, a known serial sex offender, is being given a totally misleading and undeservedly respectful sendoff by the U.S. corporate media, which refuses to report the facts of his life's work promoting anti-human policies and power. That media of course is rightwing, a fact it obfuscates by pretending its propaganda is "objective news."

Last July, after a sex scandal finally blew up publicly, Murdoch was finally forced to ditch Ailes, paying him $40 million just to go away.

Unfortunately Rupert Murdoch, a reptilian lifeform, apparently is going to live to be over 100, just like the mother who spawned him.

I'll put you on TV if you give me a kiss, Baby!

HE may be dead, but I'm NOT, Mate!

Trump Hires Christie Hatchetman/Fall Guy For His Presidential Campaign

Former henchman to New Jersey Republican Governor and corrupt bully Chris Christie, Bill Stepien, who became one of Christie's fall guys when it was revealed that the Christie regime vindictively caused massive traffic jams in the town of Fort Lee, NJ, has been hired by demagogic narcissist Donald Trump to a top position in Trump's campaign for president.

Stepien is to be the Trump campaign's national field director.

Stepien was one of the Christie soldiers who ordered traffic lanes leading from Fort Lee onto the George Washington Bridge to New York City blocked for several days, causing traffic blockages and a possible death due to a delayed ambulance response to an emergency. This was done because the Democratic mayor of the town declined to endorse Republican Christie for reelection as Governor. (Talk about a totalitarian mindset! Even the rival party has to endorse the Emperor of New Jersey.) Christie scapegoated his underlings to save his own political hide when the conspiracy was revealed. A criminal trial is pending, but Stepien has not been indicted, oddly. Nor are the two defendants, Bill Baroni and Bridget Anne Kelly, being threatened with long prison sentences in order to move up the chain to Christie, a common practice in the U.S. when dealing with the non-elite. [1]

Stepien is the latest in a series of recent unsavory hires by Trump to his campaign, including the editor/executive chairman of the racist, dementedly reactionary, and libelous website Breitbart.com, Stephen Bannon, as chief executive of the campaign. [2]

And the New York Times reported that sex fiend and arch reactionary propaganda czar Roger Ailes would help Trump prepare for debating Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party nominee for president. Ailes is a master of demagogically attacking opponents "weak points." He and Trump should make a good fit. (The Trump campaign denied the Times' report, but he and his campaign have a history of issuing false denials.) Rupert Murdoch just paid his former Fox "News" boss Ailes $40 million to go away after Ailes' despicable history as a grotesque sexual extortionist finally exploded into public view after decades hidden under the rug. (You can do an Internet search if you want the details.)

 One important note about Breitbart.com: the U.S. broadcast media especially has hidden the nature of this "news" site, by never accurately describing its content and employing deceptive euphemisms like "conservative" or the anodyne, meaningless "alt-right." The purpose is to make it seem legitimate and respectable. This is vile. As most Americans are too lazy to make an effort to get information from written sources and instead merely absorb what they see and hear from broadcast media, this practice of camouflaging the actual nature of various dementedly reactionary and even fascist organizations and individuals is particularly malign. Whereas they take the reverse attitude toward "leftists" who actually challenge the power system politically or ideologically, smearing them as "radical," "extremist," "pro-communist" or sympathetic to/supportive of "terrorism."

The Utterly Loathsome Stephen K. Bannon

 Hard core GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) Apparatchik Bill Stepien

Sex fiend Roger Ailes in photomontage with serial rapist and cloyingly unfunny ex-comedian Bill Cosby. 

[From the satirical piece "Roger Ailes, Bill Cosby To Embark On Joint Speaking Tour."] 

1]  See "Key Player in Bridgegate Scandal Hired by Donald Trump Campaign," WNYC radio (New York City), August 26, 2016.

2]  "Trump Campaign Hires Breitbart Chief Stephen Bannon," Slate, August 17, 2016. A former Breitbart editor-at-large describes Bannon as a bully and a totalitarian type. For more detail on the tawdry behavior of Bannon and staff defections his abusive ways have caused, see "The G.O.P.’s Civil War Comes to Breitbart: A staff rebellion at Breitbart suggests all is not well in Trumpworld," Vanity Fair, .March 14, 2016. Bannon infamously abandoned one of his own female reporters who was assaulted by Trump minion Cory Lewandowski (subsequently hired by the execrable, ethics-free CNN as a "commentator" and "analyst" of the presidential race!).

 

Murdoch Brings Back Into the Fold The Woman He Wishes Was His Daughter

Rupert Murdoch, the ruthless, ethics-free, arch-reactionary global media baron and political kingmaker (and breaker), has apparently hired back his political hitwoman Rebekah Brooks. 

Brooks used to run Murdoch's United Kingdom print propaganda operations as chief executive of "News International," a role she was forced to step down from after being criminally indicted in the massive phone-hacking and police bribery scandal of Murdoch's Minions in "Great" Britain.

Now, according to the UK's Financial Times (cited by Reuters), Brooks will be back in her old executive chair, as boss of all of Murdoch's British “news”papers. There she will resume her former duties of overseeing the poisoning of the British public mind with neo-fascist agitprop, political slander and vituperation directed at opponents of Murdoch and at any public figure with the slightest evidence of a progressive tendency; tawdry sexual titillation and innuendo (often with hypocritical puritanical denunciation included); and celebrity and “royals” tittle-tattle and trivia to distract the moronic masses, plus combinations of the above. [1]

No doubt Brooks will be handsomely remunerated. Murdoch previously gave her a going-away present of 16.1 million British pounds when she resigned her post in Murdoch's empire. (At the exchange rate on the date she resigned, July 15, 2011, of around $1.615 per pound, that's about $26 million. Of course she didn't get the money on that exact date. On top of that, Murdoch paid her lawyers fees, probably over a million pounds. Not bad for doing your boss' dirty work.)

It's been widely reported that Murdoch has a paternal affection for Brooks. He has stood staunchly behind her through the years-long scandal as she twisted and turned like a greased eel and ultimately succeeded in lying her way out of a jam. (Lower-ranked minions of Murdoch weren't so fortunate, some going to prison for short stints.) [2]

Murdoch's actual biological daughter, Elisabeth, apparently has some ethical standards (thus indicating that morality is not genetic) and has even offered some veiled criticism of her father's media practices in public. She has kept a greater distance from the Great Man than has his sons. Murdoch's mother is also named Elisabeth, so presumably he named his daughter after his Mum. 

But with Brooks, the years of closeness, the fact that they have matching personalities (completely ruthless, and free of the burden of a pesky conscience) and amoral-reactionary politics, and the great trust Murdoch places in her, plus the tremendous support he has provided her rather than treating her as expendable as he did his other underlings caught in scandal, whom he unsentimentally threw overboard, and adding the descriptions of people in a position to observe the relationship, leads one reasonably to the conclusion that Rebekah is The Daughter Rupert wishes he had had.

Rebekah and Rupert, Together Again at Last.

Another person who privately stood foursquare behind Brooks during her period of tribulation (and apparently has a soft-spot for her) is the current Prime Minister of Britain, the Tory toff David Cameron, a social friend of Brooks. The two met at least several dozen times over a period of several years, and apparently exchanged numerous emails and texts- most of them kept hidden by Cameron and his accomplices. Obviously both share reactionary politics also. [3] 

 

“I don't want them to see what I'm hiding behind my back.” British

ruling class toff and prime minister David Cameron.

Brooks is a woman who had wormed her way into the British elite, socially and politically. Her precise social standing currently is opaque to his outsider and not-close observer of British society. I will leave that to others to analyze.

Murdoch waited a decent interval, about one year, after Brooks' unjust acquittal in her trial to openly bring her back on board his pirate vessel. (The evidence of her guilt is overwhelming. Andy Coulson, one of her former underlings and a co-defendant at trial, who was formerly the top Murdoch editor at News [sic] of the World, and later chief propagandist for Tory Prime Minister David Cameron- yes, him again- was not so lucky.) [Footnote 2.]

 Coppers can't lay a hand on her.

Speaking of Crime and No Punishment, throughout his career as a global propaganda czar, Murdoch has personally been above the law, as his enterprises mostly have been.

In the UK scandal, Murdoch's U.S. parent corporation was in blatant violation of U.S. law against bribing foreign officials. Also his minions hacked some victims' phones on U.S. soil.
Yet, with utter predictability, the Obama regime refused to prosecute “News” Corp. for the very blatant violation of the Federal Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which criminalizes US companies from even attempting to bribe foreign officials, let alone succeeding. (British police officials were regular recipients of Murdoch bribes.)

In typical smarmy fashion, the Obama regime kept the news as quiet as possible (it came out in a corporate filing by Murdoch's “News” Corp. in the U.S.), reneging on a promise to keep his stateside victims apprised of the progress of the “investigation.” [4]

Contrast that with Obama's and Holder's (Loretta Lynch going forward) targeting of journalists and persecution of whistleblowers. There's the secret indictment of Julian Assange, the lawless attacks on the finances of Wikileaks, the mass tapping of the Associated Press's telephones, the targeting of a Fox News (irony there) reporter in a criminal “investigation,” the persecution of government whistleblowers, and most recently, the adoption of a new Pentagon policy of assassinating journalists they don't like, labeling them “unprivileged belligerents” in official military doctrine. [5] 

 

And then there was the assassination of Michael Hastings.

Other examples of Murdochian lawbreaking with impunity was his illegal ownership of TV stations when his corporation was still Australian, before he incorporated in the U.S.; his illegal ownership of newspapers and television stations in the same cities; one of his companies hacking into the computers of a rival company, a much more serious crime than what the U.S. wanted to send Aaron Swartz away for 30 years over; his companies "non-profit" and thus non-taxable status in New York State; and probably a lot lot more.

But the Federal government has more important things to do- like locking up marijuana sellers. (And under Obama, locking up medical marijuana clinic owners too. Thanks, President Choom Gang! Great to see you on the job!) 

Reason to be Cheerful: Look Ma, I'm Above the Law!

But Hold the presses! Murdoch's criminal legal troubles in Britain may have another chapter or few to run. See “Phone hacking: CPS may bring corporate charges against Murdoch publisher- Metropolitan police hands over file of evidence on Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper arm to Crown Prosecution Service,” Guardian, 28 August, 2015.

Let's hope.

“That's right, reactionary plutocrats like me should rightly rule the world! What of it!”

1] “UPDATE 3-Rebekah Brooks returning to News Corp as UK chief – FT,” Reuters, August 28, 2015. In March it was reported that Brooks was being set up in a U.S. position by Murdoch. Possibly that was a trial balloon surreptitiously floated by Murdoch himself, either by him making a “casual” comment to someone through whom he knew it would get into the media, or by his minions “leaking.” See "Rebekah Brooks about to be rehired by Rupert Murdoch for US operation, "Guardian (UK), 1 March, 2015.

2] Andy Coulson, who admitted to listening to stolen voicemails of David Blunkett to his mistress, only has to serve less than 9 months in jail. The former top editor of the Murdoch Sunday rag News [sic] of the World, where thousands of private messages of other people were surreptitiously stolen, was sentenced to 18 months, less than the 2 year maximum, and since he's a “non-violent” offender, he automatically only has to serve half, with additional reductions. Blunkett was a cabinet minister, the “Home Secretary,” similar to an Interior Minister or the U.S. Attorney General, that is, a guy in charge of internal security/domestic repression. The voicemails were publicized and used by Murdoch's minions to force Blunkett from office. Numerous subordinate editors and reporters were also mildly sentenced. Most pled guilty. For the various sentences, see e.g. “Andy Coulson jailed for 18 months for conspiracy to hack phones,” Guardian, 4 July, 2014, an inaccurate title since the article reports he'll only have to serve under 9 momths; “Andy Coulson sentenced for 18 months in phone hacking trial,” UK Telegraph, 4 July, 2014; “Jules Stenson admits phone hacking at News of the World,” Telegraph, 12 December, 2014.

3] See e.g. "David Cameron put on the spot by cosy texts to Rebekah Brooks: Messages about horse riding and conference speech from cache of texts and emails handed over to Leveson inquiry," Guardian, 3 November, 2012.

This was only a fraction of Cameron's texts exchanged with Brooks, as he kept the rest hidden on the Leveson inquiry commission set up to ostensibly get to the bottom of the Murdoch empire scandal, which involved deep and numerous ties with the top echelons of British power and with the police at various levels, including bribery and police coverups of the crimes of Murdoch's minions. See “David Cameron acknowledges there may be more Rebekah Brooks texts,” Guardian, 4 November, 2012.

4] “News Corp won't be prosecuted in US in relation to phone hacking,” Guardian, 2 February, 2015.

5] For an overview of some of the Obama regime's depredations against actual journalists, see “Leak investigations and surveillance in post-9/11 America,” Committee to Protect Journalists, October 10, 2013. 
 
For the Pentagon's new “kill reporters who don't toe our line” policy, see “Bush Created 'Enemy Combatants.' Now Obama Has Invented 'Unprivileged Belligerents, Formerly Known as Journalists,” August 11, 2015, and “From The Horse's Mouth: Pentagon Lawyer Confirms Targeting of Journalists,” August 16, 2015