Your Daily Murdoch
Tony Blair’s Attorney General–the guy who provided specious legal justification for the UK to go to war with us in Iraq–is catching some heat for not investigating the Murdoch hacking allegations more thoroughy.
The Telegraph hired one of the big private intelligence companies, Kroll, to figure out who leaked details of a recording they had of Britain’s Business secretary Vince Cable “declaring war” on News International (and its bid to acquire BSkyB). Kroll can’t be sure, but they think it was a former Telegraph exec who moved to News Corp.
The WSJ reports that DOJ is preparing subpoenas in an investigation of News Corp. Now, why woudl WSJ be the newspaper to report that, do yo suppose?
Some of the lawyers hacked by NotW–including Julian Assange’s, though the hack was almost certainly before he represented Assange–are just learning of that fact. This scandal resembles the illegal wiretap scandal here in the US in so many ways.
Someone just wrote a Firefox add-on to alert you if your browser is about to open a Murdoch-owned site.
Justice and Injustice
After firing the two women who did some of the most important early work on foreclosure fraud, FL AG Pam Bondi has now started trashing them publicly. I’m guessing Bondi figured out, after the fact, that firing two fairly low-level employees without cause could cause a whole lot of legal problems.
Remember the case against Joseph Adekeye I wrote about here? Ars Technica has a good profile on it.
There’s something very fishy about the custody discussions of Ali Mussa Daqduq–none of the stated excuses for the problem–the debate over whether to try terrorists in civilian or military courts–makes sense. Not least bc Daqduq is a member of Hezbollah, not al Qaeda, and we’re not at war against Hezbollah. So if we want to try him, it seems, it’s got to be in civilian courts. Which suggests the real problem is that we’re unwilling (I wonder whether we’re trying to hide ties between Hezbollah and Nuri-al-Maliki’s government) or unable (because we only have tainted evidence) to try him in civilian court. Or maybe we did something like waterboard him.
The War on Terror and Our Collapsing Empire
A bomb took out the Norwegian Prime Minister’s office today (though he was safe), followed by a shooting at a summer camp tied to the PM’s party. Norwegian police report that the attack was probably domestic–not Islamic–terrorism. In other news, bmaz’ compatriots would rather be slammed by dust storms than haboobs. See also Glenzilla on the degree to which Americans are stumped by an attack on “peaceful” Norway.
Spencer reports that the State Department refuses to allow the Inspector General for Iraq, Stuart Bowen, to have any oversight into the 5000-person mercenary army that will protect “diplomats” after our troops leave. The State Department says Bowen’s mandate only covers reconstruction. Of course, State doesn’t have a normal Inspector General–haven gotten rid of Howard “Cookie” Krongard (brother of Blackwater and CIA figure, “Buzzy”) back in 2007 in the aftermath of the Nissour Square incident.
The Saudis are considering a law that would make ordinary dissent–such as questioning the integrity of King Abdullah–a terrorist crime.
This is not the day to discuss this (I hope to return to it), but the Bulletin of Nuclear Scientists compares our response to terrorism, WMD, and banksters to our response to climate change. (h/t Grist) Even acknowledging that terrorism remains a big threat, climate change now rivals if not surpasses it in terms of death and destruction. The animation above, btw, comes from this NOAA discussion on the current heat wave.