Hack attack
I hope everyone is glued to The Murdochs: Empire of Influence - currently being streamed on a television near you. The theatre of Succession is no match for the real-life drama unfolding in this New York Times-backed documentary.
We're up to episode 5, dealing with the hacking crisis at the News of the Screws, which happened on James Murdoch's watch in London, and brought him undone as the future crowned king of the family's steaming pile.
James Murdoch's mission in the Old Dart was to secure for the family 100 percent control of BSkyB, a cash cow in which, at the time, News Corporation had a 39 percent interest.
The aim of the full acquisition was the Foxification of the British broadcaster.
Along comes the phone hacking scandal that at its darkest involved the Screws hacking the phone of the dead school girl Millie Dowler, and not telling the police or her family what they discovered.
There were staggering amounts of hush money paid to hacking victims threatening to sue. At the time hacking was rife at the newspaper, but the company was sticking to the ruse that it was the work of a lone, rogue employee.
James Murdoch lied to a parliamentary committee investigating the scandal, feigning ignorance about the scale of criminality and amounts of the settlements.
Murdoch's takeover of BSkyB dissolved in a puddle of ignominy and James left the UK with his tail between his legs - ultimately to reinvent himself outside the company as an environmentalist, opposed to Fox News' election-denying money-sluicing agenda - the same agenda that he sought to replicate in Blighty.
Emily Bell, the director of digital journalism at Columbia University graduate school, put it most brilliantly on Empire of Influence: if you uproot the Murdoch tree you can see where the root system spirals - into the heart of politics and society. Through the power concentrated at the top, one family can set the trajectory of an entire country.
With two-thirds of the daily print media in Australia under the thumb of the Molochs, we already know the trajectory set for this country.
Greenie Senator Sarah Hanson-Young has introduced legislation for a parliamentary commission of inquiry into News Corp and media diversity in general.
It is a good time to strike against the Evil Empire - in the slipstream of Dominion and Lachlan Murdoch's defamation case against the minnow newsletter Crikey disappearing down the gurgler.
The Nasty Party, steadfastly in Rupert's pocket, won't support Hanson-Young's legislation, nor will a fearful Labor government - even though rank 'n' file Labourites loathe the Molochs and their propaganda machine.
Quite possibly, the influence of the News Corp fishwraps and its hired myrmidons has peaked and is now waning.
Conceptual artist Jeremy Deller's melting wax figures of Rupert and Lachlan are a testament to that.
Assange face-off
Bruce Wolpe, columnist, former Congressional staffer and Julia Gillard chief-of-staff, had a worthwhile piece about Julian Assange in Granny Herald.
There is a rising tide of opinion that Assange should walk out of HMP Belmarsh, where he is languishing while appealing attempts to extradite him to face charges under the US Espionage Act, 1917.
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