Murdoch and Google.

* there's an incredible meme sweeping across FoxNews where they are slamming google for not ponying up private data to the USG - and calling them hypocrites because they are working with the Chinese Govt and censoring stuff over there. fair enough, as it goes. But not once have i heard (of course) a mention of the fact that mr murdoch also has business interests in China - and i betchya ten bux that Star TV doesn't run stories about Tianenmen Square, and I haven't heard it reported anywhere (of course) that Murdoch tried to kill Chris Patton's book, or the fact that he kicked the BBC off the Star platform.

The hypocrisy knows no bounds - i know i shouldn't be surprised, but...

Speaking of Murdoch, who renounced his Australian citizenship so that he could own a TV license in america, remember what i said last week:

"you seem to think that treason is a special sort of crime - but that is only true if the perpetrator is a 'patriot'. if the perp considers themselves a global citizen, then 'treason' is just another word, another crime - and 'patriotism' is just for the rubes, something quaint like religion or the geneva conventions."

and more on the same theme here where i said

" the military industrial entertainment complex is systemically 'corrupt' (aka broken) to the extent that we don't even necessarily need individual acts of corruption. the institutional forces are sufficient to lead to 'corrupt' outcomes."

Murdoch, afaik, doesn't have any ideology or agenda (apart from Mammon) - he simply has a business model where he takes on the funtion of an outsourced propaganda arm for a bunch of different governments, in return for access/ taxbreaks/ regulatory protection etc. You can see how quickly that can create problems if, say, the Chinese Govt wants to demonise america (via StarTV), and the USG wants to demonise China (via FNC) - all of a sudden we can have the populations of two superpowers brainwashed into rooting vehemently for war. Or imagine the same situation with pakistan and india.

We know that Murdoch would comply with all and any such requests - regardless of the outcome. We have the evidence:

" (Reuters) - Ted Turner said on Thursday too few people owned too many media organizations and called rival media baron Rupert Murdoch a warmonger for what he said was Murdoch's promotion of the U.S. war in Iraq.

"He's a warmonger," Turner said in an evening speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco of Murdoch, whose News Corp. Ltd. owns the fast-growing Fox News Channel. "He promoted it.""

Of course, Murdoch isn't a real warmonger. He'd 'sell' peace if that's where the money is.