I never voted for YOU, Murdoch!

It's outrageous, don't you think, that the elected Prime Minister of this country kow-tows at the rancorous feet of the Tax-avoiding, anti-democracy, arch-fascist Rupert Murdoch?

It transpires that Tony Blair, in his rush to jam his head so far up Rupert's wrinkly, withered fundament that his Personal Private Secretary has to hold on to his ankles, has been slagging off the BBC's outstanding coverage of the aftermath of Katrina.

Murdoch, addressing a conference of influential media figures in New York last Thursday, told the assembled guests that our sycophantic Prime Minister had confided to him that he had been shocked at the way the BBC had covered the disaster in Louisiana.

Murdoch told them "Tony Blair told me yesterday that he was in Delhi last week and he turned on the BBC World Service to see what was happening in New Orleans, and he said it was just full of hate at America and gloating about our troubles."

Hmm... maybe the reception in Delhi isn't very good, or maybe Delhi sits on the other side of a tear in the Space-Time Continuum and what Blair heard was broadcast from an Alternative Reality, but I can't think of a single thing that was reported by the BBC in all these weeks that could be construed as anti-American or untrue.

To smear the BBC like this is totally dishonest, but it's all we can expect from our very own war criminal Prime Minister, who has hated the BBC with a vengeance ever since the BBC first reported that Blair and his henchmen had "Sexed-Up" the Intelligence on Iraq, and used the phoney intel to mislead Parliament to justify the absolutely disastrous, criminal War in Iraq.

The BBC also covered the now-infamous Downing Street Memo which proved that the Intelligence was "fixed" to fit the intentions of Bush and Blair. As many of you will be aware, the Downing Street Memo is crucial to current attempts by the brow-beaten,    American Left to bring about Impeachment proceedings against George Bush Jnr.

The BBC coverage of Hurricane Katrina was absolutely first-class and accurate. They were there on the ground documenting the plight of the dispossessed poor, the disparity between what was happening on the ground and how it was being initially reported by the right-wing spin machine, and the fatal incompetence of FEMA, as it happened, day by day.

At no point did the language used in the BBC's reportage come anywhere near the vitriol and indignation expressed by the hitherto fawning American mainstream media when the veil was FINALLY ripped from their collective eyes, and the Bush Administration's incompetence and complicity was laid bare for the entire world to witness.

If Tony Blair seriously expected the BBC to spin the tidal wave of death and misery to spare the political blushes of the arse-scratching baboons whose corrupt policies contributed so massively to the final outcome, he was rightly disappointed.

If he expected the BBC to toady up to George Bush by praising his inept FEMA pal "Brownie", who was instantly savaged by the domestic media and finally fell on his own sword, he was understandably let down.

If he expected the BBC to lie to the world and support George Bush's lie that "No-one could have predicted the damage caused", or "No-one could have predicted the Levees would fail", when it is a matter of documentary proof that both were predicted, then it is right that Blair felt let-down.

If he expected the BBC to lie to the world and say that the authorities had handled the aftermath with even the slightest hint of competence, I'm glad he felt betrayed.

If by "gloating" he meant the bits where the BBC reported that A) the budgets for levee repairs were decimated by Bush to pay for his imperialist adventurism in the Middle East, despite expert predictions that the levees couldn't withstand a category 4 Hurricane, and B) the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA operations in Louisiana was fired from his previous job overseeing horse shows because he was incompetent at even THAT, then I think Tony Blair and Rupert Murdoch can't tell the difference between "Gloating" and "Anaphylactic Shock".

And if by "Hate" he means that people watching the BBC in the UK might be given the impression that the USA is a deeply divided country shocked at the unprecedented delay and inaction of it's government to bring help to the poverty-stricken poor population who paid for that with their lives, then Murdoch and Blair can't tell the difference between "Hate" and "Compassion for the suffering of the victims of Katrina".

I should explain at this juncture that it is not only the American Annexe which has a very, very serious problem with the toxic pollution that spews from the Murdoch Empire. Here in the British sector the once-Australian Machiavelli, Rupert Murdoch, has his fingers jammed very tightly up our Dear Leader, who has been deeply in debt to Murdoch since Murdoch agreed to support him in every election since 1997, through his rabid, low-brow daily newspaper The Sun, and the once-respected broadsheet heavyweight, The Times.

But what was the cost of this gigantic volte-face from the previous champion of Margaret Thatcher? What on earth did Tony promise Rupy to guarantee that fabulous dowry?

It's always been difficult to pinpoint to what extent Murdoch has poisoned British politics, but in the past week there have been a couple of revelations which are causing understandable outrage in the UK:

A non-Murdoch-owned (but appallingly right-wing, nevertheless) newspaper, the Mail on Sunday has published extracts from the memoirs of Lance Prince, the Prime Minister's former deputy media adviser, who, whilst he was serving Blair between 1998 to 2000 was also keeping a revealing, candid diary.

Though he was ordered to amend his diary prior to publication by the Cabinet Office, The Mail on Sunday has obtained the original entries, and we discover that not only did Blair "relish" the power-trip of sending the RAF on their almost daily bombing missions over the Iraqi no-fly zone in 1998, we learn that despite publically stating that he was taking action "with a heavy heart", he nevertheless felt it part of his "Coming of Age" as a Leader.

More significantly, Lance Prince also reveals that Tony Blair promised Rupert Murdoch that he would be consulted on any change to Britain's policy towards Europe... in fact one entry described the atmosphere at No. 10 Downing Street as "very edgy" after pro-Europe comments by the then Secretary of State for Trade, Peter Mandelson "because we have promised News International we won't make any changes to our Europe policy without talking to them."

Pardon me if I pause a moment to puke... thank you…

I remember a time almost twenty years ago when the British Labour Party in opposition still had integrity, when Murdoch's journalists were banned from all Labour Party press conferences, in solidarity with the printers and other employees summarily sacked by Murdoch when he moved his whole operation from Fleet Street to Wapping in East London.

photo: Nic Oatridge, 1986

The party policy at that time was that once in power, a Labour government would break Murdoch's stranglehold on the British print media by forcing him to sell at least one of his national daily papers.

Because of this threat to his corrupt ambitions for world-wide domination and influence, Murdoch set about doing everything he could to cripple any chance Labour had of getting re-elected, until one day, in 1994, two of Blair's closest advisers, Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell, went to a secret meeting with the editor of The Sun.

Alastair Campbell & Peter Mandelson

Later that year Blair flew half way around the planet to speak at Murdoch’s annual conference for his senior executives in the Australian luxury resort of Hayman Island, and to comfort and assure Murdoch that “New Labour” were no threat to his undeniable power, and in return Murdoch 'introduced' his most trusted emissary - Sunday Times columnist Irwin Stelzer - to keep a close, advisory eye on Blair and to report back to Murdoch.

Soon afterwards Tony Blair shocked everyone by announcing that despite everything he had promised previously, he would not sign Britain up to the proposed EU Constitution without a referendum.

This satisfied the agressively anti-European Murdoch, because he knew that with that much advanced warning he had plenty of time to flood his press with anti-European sentiments, and to stir up prejudice and resentment. Murdoch had won, and on that basis he was instrumental in sweeping Tony Blair into power.

I could go on to discuss Blair's alleged failed attempt to influence the sale of an Italian TV station to Murdoch, or the fact that The Sun published the date of the 2001 Election before the Deputy Prime Minister knew it, or the fact that when she discovered she was pregnant, Cherie Bliar rushed off to tell The Sun about it before  the rival Daily Mirror could scoop the story, but I won't…

Sorry... got to puke again... it's all the betrayal that does it, you know...

American readers may get some cold comfort to discover that Murdoch is as corruptly insinuated and is as dangerously manipulative in the UK as over there, and for us there's some comfort knowing that we'll never have to suffer the mentally-ill rantings of a Bill O'Reilly on UK television because we have laws to stop people like that, but nevertheless Murdoch is all over the media like a cloud of mustard gas, and I'm sure you must agree that makes him a very, very dangerous man because he makes a absolute mockery of any semblance of democratic process.

When I voted for Tony Blair in 1997 I was voting for policies which we were promised, but which it turned out didn't suit Rupert Murdoch's personal bigotry/greed, so now we can't have them!

If Rupert Murdoch wants the right to dominate the lives of millions of people and influence political policy making, then he should stand as a political candidate which at least implies a degree of accountability. Instead what we have is a devious, greedy, manipulative monster lurking in the shadows, pushing his personal agenda all over an enormous amount of international territories, and revelling in the fact that wherever he goes he'll never ever need to wipe his own withered anus again, because there'll always be a long queue of politicians with their tongues drooling, at the ready to do the job.

And that just makes me sick.