with what you say. Indeed, I suspect much of what passes for research and opinion in Washington and the US comes directly or indirectly from "think tanks" that are simply paid propaganda organizations, period. Not only does money (unlimited pretty much now) buy elections and candidates and election campaigns but it also buys opinion and propaganda. I don't know if anyone has done an inventory of "think tanks" and their biases (most I think are biased one way or another; a few may be more or less impartial) but again, were one done, I would suspect the vast majority would be discovered to be various shades of conservative or reactionary, since that is where most of the money is. And of those I would again suspect a considerable percentage are neo-conservative or Zionist, since there is a lot of money there too. I am not aware of many if any think tanks supported by labor unions, although a few may get money from rich liberals.

"...university professors ought to do the same with any outside income that they earn.**"

I couldn't find where these asterisks lead to, but at my university it's required that we reveal this information. There's even a space on the yearly CV update for it. I just assumed it was a requirement of the University Act, but now I'm beginning to wonder.

I am beginning to understand why the general public seems to have no concern about transparency issues. There is such a thing as "corruption overload." This last 30 years of shift from democracy to corporate imperialism has opened up so many opportunities for corruption that it's become "dog bites man" news.

For example, in the US, corporations write the legislation, freeing up politicians to fundraise. And they don't even have to read the legislation (as Michael Moore made clear on the issue of the PATRIOT Act). Lobbyists will instruct them on how to vote. Between fundraising gigs, they've got plenty of time for sexual escapades -- photographing their bodyparts for Twitter distribution, or driving drunk with a stripper in the car -- as the newspapers regularly report. Ho-hum, just another day at the office.

Eli Clifton has done his country a big favour, but I'm not sure enough people will appreciate it.

Raises the question: where's George?

His brief post-presidential career of flitting around the nation, and Canada, addressing business groups for amazing fees (just like his dad) seems to have been curtailed, or ended. Why?

Boring speaker?

Health problems?

The article might be largely correct but there is one misleading part. Walt mentioned that hardline Zionists were among the financial backers. That isn't the same thing as the Israeli government. Indeed, the Israeli position on Palestine set aside, the Israeli government actually has a good deal of trouble with Zionists. The recent arrest of two rabbi's who promoted a disturbing religious theory of killing non-Jews just highlights the problems Israel has with far-right elements.

Look on my works, ye mighty; and despair!" So said the base of the statue of Ozymandias of Egypt - Ramasses the Great, Pharaoh of the 19th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt - discovered deep under the desert sands in Shelley's epic poem Ozymandias.

The poet's point being of course that though undoubtedly great, in his day, ultimately Ozymandias and his empire went the way of all flesh, and all empires. So it seems is going the empire of Rupert Murdoch, once the greatest media conglomerate the world has ever known.

Absolute carnage is currently being caused in British public life by the fall-out from the illegal phone hacking carried out by Murdoch's servants. In a story transfixing the country, there are often developments several times daily including arrests of powerful people and resignations from some of the best known public figures in the land.

Like all good scandals follow the money is the maxim. And the question made famous by Watergate - "What did he know and when did he know it?" is the one on everybody's lips. The "he" in question is, increasingly, the prime minister himself.

David Cameron is slowly sinking into the Murdoch quicksands for several reasons. His relations with Murdoch's top-brass, now under investigation, have turned out to be almost comically close. He was a "riding partner" of Rebekah Brooks, Murdoch's British CEO, who was arrested by police on Sunday.

Since becoming prime minister just fifteen months ago, Cameron has had 26 meetings with Murdoch's executives. Cameron's wife was likely the only person to get more meetings with the PM than Murdoch's executives.

Cameron, against the advice of his deputy prime minister, employed former News of the World editor Andy Coulson as his communications director. Coulson, who has been at the centre of the hacking probe, was arrested on July 8, while his deputy was detained last week.

This has snowballed, causing the resignation of Britain's top two policemen and several other senior Murdoch executives.

Two months after Coulson was finally pushed out of his official position as communications director, and was under criminal investigation for phone hacking, Cameron invited him to spend the weekend at Chequers, the British prime minister's country home.

Such is the turmoil in London that respected commentators - on Monday for example Professor Roy Greenslade, the pre-eminent media pundit - are calling on Cameron's deputy Nick Clegg to table a motion of no confidence in the PM.

Last week, that would have been a joke. Today it doesn't seem so funny, or unlikely.

I declare an interest. I was one of the first people to be informed by Scotland Yard - London's Metropolitan Police - that my phone was being hacked by a private investigator working for Mr Murdoch. They visited me in my office in parliament and told me this, so I began a legal action which is set to come before the courts in December.

It didn't surprise me all that much in the light of my role as a leader of Britain's anti-war movement, a champion of the Palestinian cause for over 35 years, and a defender of Muslims both at home and abroad. Even Mr Murdoch wouldn't dispute the fact that these are causes far from his own heart. This throws up a contradiction now coming more clearly into focus.

Prince Walid bin Talal bin Abdelaziz Al-Saud, the second biggest shareholder in News Corporation after Murdoch, recently gave an interview, on his yacht, to the BBC flagship programme Newsnight. The Saudi prince declared himself "a good friend" of Rupert Murdoch and his son James Murdoch (probably the next executive to be charged by the police in the scandal).

He defended both men briskly, but in doing so drew attention to the fact that he is the second biggest shareholder in the Murdoch empire, and that the Murdochs were major shareholders in his own Rotana media empire in the Middle East.

An unholy alliance, surely? Mr Murdoch is the co-owner, with Prince Walid, of Fox News - one of the most virulently anti-Muslim television stations in the world. The station gives a megaphone to the likes of Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and Sarah Palin. In the US, Fox's role was to throw gallons of petrol on the flames Islamophobia which were leading to the burning of the Holy Quran by vigilantes.

Then there is the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" controversy. The planned building was, of course, not at Ground Zero. It was not a mosque but an Islamic centre. The centre was partially funded by Prince Walid, the co-owner with Murdoch of Islamophobic media fire-raisers including Fox News and the New York Post.

Prince Walid it will be recalled was roundly insulted by the government of New York City when they returned the cheque he donated to the victims of the 9/11 attacks. A glutton for punishment no doubt.

Murdoch's newspapers in Britain are little better than their US-counterparts and include photographs and sexualised images which would never see the light of day in Riyadh, the Saudi capital. As a whole it is safe to say that Murdoch's nearly 200 newspapers - and his television stations in so far as he can compel the latter which are more tightly regulated - are bastions of fanatically pro-Israel, anti-Muslim bigotry.

Yet they are co-owned by a member of the Saudi Royal family who not only approves of these practices, but regards the mogul Murdoch as his "good friend".

Murdoch's plans to take 100 per cent ownership of British Sky Broadcasting now lie in ruins like Ozymandias's broken statue. Aged 80, he may, at the pace we are moving, be ousted by his own shareholders before long.

His dream of a Sky Arabia, however, remains a clear and present danger. Like the tobacco manufacturers, the more they are run out of towns in the west the more they concentrate on selling their addictive poison in the east. NewsCorp, with Prince Walid, may be sailing your way. Beware of pirates ye Arabs.

aljazeera.net

It is interesting to note that Reddit co-founder Aronn Swartz was charged with hacking the academic journal JSTOR and a possible motivation was to figure out who is paying the researchers. "Why would Swartz want to download what is likely gigabytes of information? His history includes a study co-authored with Shireen Barday, which looked through thousands of law review articles looking for law professors who had been paid by industry patrons to write papers."

quote from wired.co.uk article

"Reddit co-founder charged for downloading millions of academic articles"

Two of the most important questions to be asked whenever decisons are made or whenever opinion is put forward are, one Stephen has already mentioned, which is 'who's paying?' but wouldn't the second be 'who benefits?'

Nothing like Harvard's resident Jew hater to clang the bells of "Beware the Jews" when describing the danger of who's bankrolling academics.

Of course, Walt remains silent when it comes to his own home turf and how Harvard University wound up returning a $3.0 million gift from Sheik Zayed after news broke that his Zayed Center hosted a string of hate mongers.

No, Walt remains comfortably silent towards those dollars. Better to bash the Jews.

At this point, there really is nothing the voting public can do. If you vote dem or republican, you'll get the same thing as we have seen. Both parties put on quite a show, but both are beholden to the same rich group that is less than 1% of the American population, and also a good percentage of folks who aren't American at all. Until we tell both parties to go to hell and eliminate the crooks in D.C.(including the Supreme Court) we'll just get more of the same. faye reagan by a thousand wounds is still death and that's the direction we're heading in.Until we have leaders who will apply import tariffs on foreign goods, cut military spending, shut down overseas bases, stop funding crooked lapdog governments for the international business cartel known at the world trade organization, things will be the same, count on it.

Do you mean the current foreign policy that is dooming us? This is a new time, it is the 21st century. Obama is good friends with many leaders around the world and he is not afraid to tell them what he thinks. He knows that the USA is not longer a bully, topdog, like the republicans want you to think. Go look at the treasury of every major country. China is at the top, and USA is at the very bottom. Our debt is around 9,000,000,000 but the actual debt including what we owe our troops is estimated at 50,000,000,000. RIO Answer me this, how are we going to pay our men and women for their sacrifice if we don't have the money to do it?.