From Gallipoli to Singapore

Interesting stuff on Rupert "The Chin" Murdoch by MoDo.

As a young journalist during World War I, Keith Murdoch became famous when he visited the Gallipoli campaign and broke censorship rules barring any criticism of the conduct of war or tally of casualty figures. He wrote home to the Australian prime minister, a family friend, and he sneaked off to London to blow the whistle there — in a jingoistic, exaggerated way his son would appreciate — about the incompetence of the British command in charge of the decimation in Turkey, where 120,000 soldiers died, including 8,500 Australian infantry and light horsemen.

Old posters for the brilliant 1981 movie “Gallipoli” give Rupert Murdoch a producing credit. He financed half the movie to show the world why his father had been right.

Rupert wanted to avenge his father with the British establishment, and what sweeter way to do it than to take over the British press, including its most prestigious broadsheet, The Times of London, and help decide who runs Britain.

His most revealing moment was when he volunteered his admiration of Singapore, calling it the most “open and clear society in the world.” Its leaders are so lavishly paid, he said, that “there’s no temptation, and it is the cleanest society you’d find anywhere.”

It was instructive that Murdoch chose to praise a polished, deeply authoritarian police state. Maybe that’s how corporations would live if they didn’t have to believe in people.

That is how they live, Red, and they don't.