kerkko.fi

Lowell Bergman has investigated News Corporation for PBS Frontline. He depicts Rupert Murdoch's British operation as a criminal enterprise, routinely hacking the voicemail and computers of innocent people, and using bribery and coercion to infiltrate police and government over decades. Enemies are ruthlessly "monstered" by the tabloids. Bergman also spoke to NPR's Fresh Air. But the hits keep coming: in recent days News Corp has been accused of hacking rival pay TV services and promoting pirated receiver cards in both the UK and Australia. With the looming possibility of prosecution under America's Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, how long will shareholders consider Rupert Murdoch irreplaceable?

There is an address in Cheyenne, Wyoming -- 2710 Thomes Avenue -- where 2,000 companies are based. But it is not a skyscraper. Or even an office complex. It is a basic, 1,700-square-foot brick house. And it is the subject of an investigative report by Reuters called "A Little House of Secrets on the Great Plains."

One of the reporters on the project, Brian Grow, says it looks like a typical home -- until you go inside. "Lo and behold, the corporate suites for the companies that are registered at that address are in fact cubbyhole mailboxes, floor to ceiling in the main room," Grow tells Guy Raz, host of All Things Considered.

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/02/137573513/shell-game-2-000-firms-based-in-one-simple-house

Shell Game by Npr

(download)

Click here to download:

NPR_ATC_110702.mp3 (2.27 MB)

When two British lawyers, Faith Zaman and Thomas Derbyshire, signed on in 2004 to manage the affairs of Prince Jefri Bolkiah, notorious playboy brother of the Sultan of Brunei, they entered a world of orgiastic wealth: 250 companies, 2,000 cars, luxury hotels, planeloads of women and polo ponies, colossal diamonds.

Two influential US consultancy firms, The Livingston Group (LTG) and Monitor Group, had prepared strategies to reintroduce the Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, on the international arena, according to documents published in 2009 by the Libyan opposition group, National Conference of the Libyan Opposition (NCLO). (LTG said it had dropped Gaddafis' regime as a client.)

The documents showed that Gaddafi's regime would have paid millions of dollars for the publicity campaigns and related services, including a book lauding Libya under Gaddafi's rule. The book would have been based on conversations between Gaddafi and "renowned expert visitors," such as Benjamin Barber, Francis Fukuyama, Anthony Giddens, Richard Perle, among others.

In one document, Mark Fuller, CEO of Monitor Group, said he would woo foreign dignitaries to Libya to boost the regime's image. Under the strategy outlined, Monitor Group would push for positive articles about Gaddafi's regime to be published in US and international media, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, The Economist, Financial Times, and others.

The goal of the publicity campaigns was to introduce Gaddafi as a "thinker and intellectual." Also, LTG would have groomed Gaddafi's fourth son, Mutassim, for leadership, teach him English, and help set up a National Security Council that he would head. One of LTG's invoices --for USD 617,000-- was called "Project Armani." Could it have been a reference to Mutassim's suits?

http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2009/07/29/hugh-miles/the-cost-of-letters/

I drove up [to Wise County]. It was 50 miles. And I got to the fairgrounds. The parking lot was jam-packed. It was a rainy day. I couldn't see any activity outside the fairground gates. Once I went inside, it was such a stark contrast to what was on the outside. People were lined up by the hundreds, standing or sitting in long lines, many of them without shelter, in the rain, getting soaking wet, waiting for hours to get care that was being provided in animal stalls, in many cases, and in barns and under tents that had been set up, like MASH units at a wartorn site. And it was just so startling for me to see that.

I realized, when I saw those folks, that many of them could have been people I grew up with. My relatives could have been there. And they were people who, I learned later, most of them have jobs. They just don’t have jobs that offer insurance benefits. And a lot of them do have insurance, but they’re in these new kinds of plans that insurance companies are pushing more of us into, that have such high deductibles or limited benefits that we can’t get the care we need, even if we’re sending our premium dollars in. When I saw that, it was almost as if I was supposed to be seeing something like that to jolt me out of the complacency that I had been in for all these many years.

A trip I took on a corporate jet just a couple of weeks after that experience, flying from Philadelphia, where CIGNA is based, to its healthcare operations in Connecticut. And we were served -- the CEO and I -- lunch on gold-rimmed china, and we were given gold-plated flatware to eat it with. And we were sitting in a very luxurious leather chair, flying in a corporate jet that cost $5,000 an hour to operate, or just the jet fuel alone was $5,000. And for the first time, I was paying attention to what I was doing. And I realized that the people in Wise County and elsewhere in this country were in the predicaments they were so that I could fly around in such luxury to get from one place to another.

Why is Mubarak trying to squeeze a few more months out of his three-decade career in office and avowing his intentions to stay in Egypt rather than packing for the Riviera? It may be because exile is not what it used to be. Over the last 30 years, things have gotten increasingly difficult for dictators in flight. Successor regimes launch criminal probes; major efforts are mounted to identify assets that may have been looted by the autocrat or members of his immediate family.

Human rights lawyers and international prosecutors may take a close look at the tools the deposed dictator used to stay in power: Did he torture? Did he authorize shooting adversaries? Did he cause his enemies to “disappear”? Was there a mass crackdown that resulted in dozens or hundreds of deaths? A trip to The Hague or another tribunal might be in his future. Slobodan Milosevic and Charles Taylor are examples any decamping dictator would need to keep in mind.

A mechanic died violently in police custody in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, shortly after he refused to continue paying bribes. The police reportedly started extorting money from the victim after they seized the auto-rickshaw that he operated and the two men he hired to drive it. The man was delivered dead to a hospital shortly after police picked him up, bearing signs of torture. The hospital has refused to release his medical records. The case shows how Bangladeshi police are able to trade on justice, to arrest persons at will, and to kill with impunity. The wife and nephew of the dead man have been threatened repeatedly by the officers involved in the case.

A blizzard of bank notes is flying out of Afghanistan -- often in full view of customs officers at the Kabul airport -- as part of a cash exodus that is confounding US officials and raising concerns about the money's origin. The cash, estimated to total well over $1 billion a year, flows mostly to the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai, where many wealthy Afghans now park their families and funds, according to US and Afghan officials.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/24/AR2010022404914_pf.html

Scientists argue that power is corrupting because it leads to moral hypocrisy. Although we almost always know what the right thing to do is, power makes it easier to justify the wrongdoing, as we rationalize away our moral mistake.

The real question, of course, is what causes this blatant hypocrisy. One possibility is that power makes us less sensitive to the needs and feelings of others -- it silences our empathy -- and so we only think about our own motivations and needs.

Once we become socially isolated, we stop simulating the feelings of other people. Our sense of sympathy is squashed by selfishness. The UC Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner found that people with power are like patients with severe brain damage.

Our most powerful people are also the most isolated. They live in gated communities with private drivers. They skip the security lines at airports, before sitting at the front of the plane. We shouldn't be surprised that they're also assholes.

http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2010/01/power.php