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This year saw the very high profile fall from grace of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the IMF, in the alleged rape case. The trouble with mud you see is if you throw enough of it, it sticks, and with the ever present Murdoch Newscorp, there was plenty of it flying around. The Times, The Sun and others lead a relentless campaign about the goings on that night.

Strauss-Kahn was the head of the IMF at a time of great financial instability for the world. Quantitive Easing had become a way of life in trying to ease the economic tensions of the world and Strauss- Kahn famously disagreed with this philosophy. On September 27th 2010 Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega claimed that the world was "in the midst of a currency war", Strauss-Kahn however was toeing the party line about the fear of a currency war and saying the chances of this were low. By early October he was singing a very different tune. He went on to say using currencies as weapons "is not a solution [and] it can even lead to a very bad situation. There's no domestic solution to a global problem"
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5i0sx9M8VBxa65PirMTXTHV4Onhfw?docId=CNG.2dea5217c87a1a8e49b92aebb2e8ef5f.51

A house built of cards is destined to collapse.

Sealed with a handshake

In the 2010 movie 'The Inside Job', narrated by Matt Damon, Strauss-Kahn disagreed with QE on the basis that flooding the market with more money would not solve the problem that the capitalist system creates. What happened next has been well documented. Strauss-Kahn was accused by a solitary maid of assault of a sexual nature. He stood down as IMF chief and was duly replaced by the current head, Christine Lagarde, and a nice picture appeared in a Murdoch newspaper of Nicolas Sarkozy and Rupert Murdoch shaking hands prompting lines like "sealed with a handshake?"  The French Presidents main rival for the election campaign in 2012 had been dealt a severe blow and with the history and evidence of Murdoch's influence over Governments in the UK so clear it raises the question "was there foul play at work?"

Christine Lagarde has no issue with QE, and in the last week had authorised millions of US Dollars to be released into the money system to help ease fears of economic slow down in the Euro zone and the fear of Greek debt default.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2038757/Eurozone-crisis-US-taxpayers-forced-foot-Feds-bailout-turns-sour.html

Not only had the head of the IMF, who had made a u-turn on policy of currency war been removed but so too was Sarkozy's main rival for the 2012 Presidential Campaign.  Two birds with one stone.

Paperback Writer

After a couple of years hammering on about the influence of Rupert Murdoch's News International it has now officially spilled out onto every ones doorstep. You literally cannot go a day without hearing about the latest skeleton to fall out of the 'Hackgate' closet.

As a child I remember my father telling me stories of how various news outlets changed their allegiance depending on which way the wind was blowing and as I grew it gradually became clearer what he meant. Now as I look back it seems even more obvious. Successive Governments came and went but a certain someone was never too far away.  Rupert Murdoch.

Murdoch's links to the New Labour Government have been well documented and for all the efforts of the latest Labour Leader, Ed Milliband, to hustle and unsettle David Cameron over his relationship with Rebecca Brooks and the appointment of Andy Coulson, it should not go unnoticed that he too has cosied up to Murdoch Senior and it is reported that he too recruited a former News International employee, Tom Baldwin, as his director of Strategy and Communications.

People in glass houses springs to mind.

I remember as a child the Lib Dems taking a pasting at the hands of The Sun, John Major had his turn getting bashed too, leading us to Tony Blair where it was difficult to see where he ended and Rupert Murdoch began. The cosy relationship these two power hungry moguls shared only briefly took a dip on Blair's obsession with Europe and the Euro, resulting in the Euro referendum which Blair did unwilling allow the public to have allegedly to appease Murdoch.

The media frenzy whipped up prior to the invasion and occupation of Iraq is today a great example for the majority of the country of the power and influence of Murdoch's news empire, any one who has seen John Pilger's 'The War You Didn't See', I am sure would agree.  If you have not then I suggest you do. It will make you look at the British Press in a totally different light.  The documentary highlights the inept way the WMD scandal was dealt with and investigated (or not as the case turned out to be) and the duty that our media has to report, not repeat, these stories to and for us and where mistakes have been made.

The current hacking scandal engulfing Rupert Murdoch and his news empire at the moment has given rise to a couple of new documentaries, one on BBC 1 by Panorama called 'Breaking the Spell' and another on Channel 4 by Dispatches called 'How Murdoch Ran Britain'.  Both highly entertaining but for some of us not exactly breaking news, the speed of which they have been put together has been particularly interesting, with footage from the most recent enquiries appearing.
One thing I would like to know, or ask, is why has it taken until now for these documentaries to air on television?

People have got to start asking more questions of the world around them.

There will be of course a percentage of people that do not care because to them it is "just politics", there will be those that think it is important but that there are more important things going on in the world such as the American debt default crisis which is going relatively unnoticed and since I started writing this there was the tragic incident in Norway. As a student of history however, the power of propaganda and the effect the news can have in manipulating the population is of great importance.

Some people form all their opinions based solely on what they read in a daily rag, let us hope it does not include these readers.




http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/4od#3215759


http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2010/feb/24/revealed-deal-between-murdoch-blair


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/how-murdoch-had-a-hotline-to-the-pm-in-the-runup-to-iraq-war-457825.html