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Rupert Murdoch and the Corporate Media

Started by Rad, Jul 13, 2011, 08:21 AM

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Rad

I am posting the chart of Rupert Murdoch now because of all that is being revealed into the evil nature of his corporate media empire. You will notice, incredibly, that his natal Lucifer is in Gemini in his 6th House at the point of a t-square with Mercury in Pisces in his 4th, and Neptune in Virgo in his 9th. His natal Lucifer is conjunct his N.Node of Uranus. The timing of his evil empire starting to come apart is occurring as the Mars transit in Gemini has activated this natal t-square. Below are some reports on all this. At the end you will see an editorial from the Guardian newspaper in England about the corrupt nature of the corporate media.

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Rupertgate continues to grow as calls for U.S. investigations begin
By John Amato

Over the last few days, many people -- myself included -- have asked variations of this question: Will the Rupert Murdoch/News of the World phone hacking scandal, which some are calling Britian's Watergate, reach us here in America, where the modern-day Citizen Kane's holdings including the Fox TV and movie empire as well as the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post.

The answer may be yes: A report in a rival British tabloid the Daily Mirror makes an allegation that, if proven true, many Americans will find just as revolting as the phone hacking of 13-year-old morder victim Milly Dowler, maybe even more so.

Did Murdoch's London-based News of the World contact a New York City private investigator about phone hacking American victims of the 9/11 attacks? The pair chatted behind closed doors as a former New York cop made the 9/11 hacking claim. He alleged he was contacted by News of the World journalists who said they would pay him to retrieve the private phone records of the dead. Now working as a private ­investigator, the ex-officer claimed reporters wanted the victim's phone numbers and details of the calls they had made and received in the days leading up to the atrocity. A source said: "This investigator is used by a lot of journalists in America and he recently told me that he was asked to hack into the 9/11 victims' private phone data. He said that the journalists asked him to access records showing the calls that had been made to and from the mobile phones belonging to the victims and their ­relatives. "His presumption was that they wanted the information so they could hack into the ­relevant voicemails, just like it has been shown they have done in the UK. The PI said he had to turn the job down. He knew how insensitive such research would be, and how bad it would look."

Indeed. That said, this article raises more questions than it answers, and I would note a couple of  caveats. One, the story is pretty thinly sourced, as we say in the business. Two, the Mirror is a non-Murdoch-owned British tabloid driven by the same kind of competitive pressures that led to this whole scandal in the first place.

But I think the significance is this: Given the scandal in the UK, the American activities of Murdoch-controlled journalists -- at both his British publications and his U.S. enterprises -- deserve closer scrutiny, including from law enforcement. Maybe Murdoch's journalists' alleged illegal activities stopped at the far shores of the Atlantic, but we should find out for sure.

I've asked the question a few times as C&L has covered this story. Have Fox News and/or other Murdoch entities applied the same phone-hacking skills to the U.S.? Rupert Murdoch may be heading off to answer questions before Parliament.

News Corp. chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch has been asked to appear before British Parliament to answer question about his company's phone hacking scandal, as well as his son James and News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks.

The culture, media and sport select committee, which has published critical reports on the affair, has written to the trio of executives inviting them to appear, the Guardian reported.

News International said in a statement: "We have been made aware of the request from the CMS select committee to interview senior executives and will cooperate. We await the formal invitation."

CREW is demanding an investigation into Murdoch's stateside activities. Ellen at Newshounds has six good reasons to demand an investigation into the company's activities here. And you can go to Media Matters for a petition demanding such action.

Eric Boehlert writes: Scandal Woes Mount for Murdoch's Wall Street Journal Publisher

The revelation yesterday that Britain's former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, alleged that his personal information was obtained illegally by Rupert Murdoch's Sunday Times only intensifies the pressure on Les Hinton, Murdoch's longtime confidant and publisher of the Wall Street Journal.

Hinton was already facing scrutiny for the phone hacking scandal because he oversaw Murdoch's News of The World when the tabloid appears to have engaged in rampant phone hacking. Worse, Hinton oversaw an internal investigation into the matter that James Murdoch now acknowledges "wrongly maintained that these issues were confined to one reporter."

Now with the Brown allegations come additional woes:

Brown accused the paper of getting his bank details, saying he was "genuinely shocked" by its methods.  The allegations widen the scandal that brought down Britain's best-selling newspaper, the News of the World, to other newspapers also owned by Murdoch's News International media group. Brown expressed dismay at the allegations Monday night and has given investigators "all relevant evidence" he has about the matter, according to a statement from his office. "The family has been shocked by the level of criminality and the unethical means by which personal details have been obtained," the statement said. "The matter is in police hands."

Brown alleges the Sunday Times' sting took place over a ten-year period. And who oversaw the Sunday Times during key portions of that span? Since the scandal took off, their stock price has been failing so Murdoch bought back a ton of shares: Rupert Murdoch's $5bn News Corp buyback halts share slide

The Guardian publishes a very good op-ed on the media and its corrupt, elitist purposes: This media is corrupt - we need a Hippocratic oath for journalists.

Our job is to hold power to account. Instead, most of the profession simply ventriloquises the concerns of the elite.

Is Murdoch now finished in the UK? As the pursuit of Gordon Brown by the Sunday Times and the Sun blows the hacking scandal into new corners of the old man's empire, this story begins to feel like the crumbling of the Berlin Wall. The naked attempt to destroy Brown by any means, including hacking the medical files of his sick baby son, means that there is no obvious limit to the story's ramifications.

The papers cannot announce that their purpose is to ventriloquise the concerns of multimillionaires; they must present themselves as the voice of the people. The Sun, the Mail and the Express claim to represent the interests of the working man and woman. These interests turn out to be identical to those of the men who own the papers.

So the rightwing papers run endless exposures of benefit cheats, yet say scarcely a word about the corporate tax cheats. They savage the trade unions and excoriate the BBC. They lambast the regulations that restrain corporate power. They school us in the extrinsic values - the worship of power, money, image and fame - which advertisers love but which make this a shallower, more selfish country. Most of them deceive their readers about the causes of climate change. These are not the obsessions of working people. They are the obsessions thrust upon them by the multimillionaires who own these papers.

The corporate media is a gigantic astroturfing operation: a fake grassroots crusade serving elite interests. In this respect the media companies resemble the Tea Party movement, which claims to be a spontaneous rising of blue-collar Americans against the elite but was founded with the help of the billionaire Koch brothers and promoted by Murdoch's Fox News.Journalism's primary purpose is to hold power to account. This purpose has been perfectly inverted. Columnists and bloggers are employed as the enforcers of corporate power, denouncing people who criticise its interests, stamping on new ideas, bullying the powerless. The press barons allowed governments occasionally to promote the interests of the poor, but never to hamper the interests of the rich. They also sought to discipline the rest of the media. The BBC, over the last 30 years, became a shadow of the gutsy broadcaster it was, and now treats big business with cringing deference.


Steven

Dear Rad,

Thank you very much for posting this, and for all your amazing help. As a newbie to the EA Paradigm, I was hoping I might be able to ask a few questions regarding Murdoch's chart and its themes. Please forgive me if my questions seem naive.

Here's what I get:

Regarding Murdoch's drive for corporate dominance and tendency towards abuse of power, there are a lot of markers. The Pluto/Saturn opposition is the first thing that takes my eye, and next Pluto's square to the moon's nodes in the 10th and 4th houses, reflecting skipped steps in both areas. The South Node in the 10th, Saturn ascending in Capricorn opposite Pluto, Mars in the 8th, and Lucifer in Gemini in the 6th do indeed "tell a story" about a drive for leadership/mastery with the potential for abuse of power that seems to match the actions of this soul, but there are some things I'm not quite getting, particularly regarding Pluto in the 7th.

As it happens, Pluto in the 7th has been the most common position among my recent clients, and without fail, the 7th house/Libra issues as defined by the EA paradigm are clear and readily discernible in my clients. The souls coming to me are indeed working through the need for identification through relationship and require support to claim their 1st house polarity and activate their Sun's potential. Yet Murdoch's 7th house Pluto confuses me a bit.

As I grasp it so far, a 7th House Pluto, North Node in the 4th house, and Sun in 4th house (in Pisces!) conjunct Juno all would suggest a relatively "private" life dedicated at its most basic level to emotional healing and a fair amolunt of inner inquiry. While this MAY be true for Mr. Murdoch, at the risk of sounding naive, his high-profile drive for power (while clearly visible in his chart) seems to be counter-productive for a soul with the emotional/relationship-oriented intentions indicated above.

To clarify my questions:  1) Can you help explain a bit more how Pluto in the 7th drives Murdoch's life (as best as we can surmise given what we know)?
2) How would you read this soul's intentions regarding the 4th house emotional healing needs in regards to all the power issues?

Thanks very much,

Dylan

Steven

Dear Jason,

This was immensely helpful, and I can more clearly perceive now the influence of Jupiter as compensation/inflation/emotional manipulation, thanks to your assessment.

My first instinct in looking at this chart was that the 4th House Node Node/Natal Sun goal for the soul was apt to get lost or ignored in a personality that is also struggling with so many career and external control issues. I agree that the intense inner work needed with this placement would likely be terrifying to this soul, so the rhetorical question I ask is "what, besides extreme Uranian crisis and trauma, would lead a man of his generation, wealth, and soul evolutionary status to embrace such an inner path at all?"

Back to the Pluto in the 7th, I do see the problematic legacy. It was probably much easier for this soul to build a media empire, inhabit a powerful corporate role and marry a "very tough" younger woman whom the press calls the Tiger Wife than to go within, eyes wide open, and de-condition the psyche for healing. That requires true Aries/1st House courage of the heart and spirit, which are the PPP and North Node energies that must be claimed.

Personal thanks again to you, Jason, and I echo your thanks to Rad for the chance to explore this chart, and this amazing paradigm.

Best,

Dylan

Rad

Hi Dylan,

"As I grasp it so far, a 7th House Pluto, North Node in the 4th house, and Sun in 4th house (in Pisces!) conjunct Juno all would suggest a relatively "private" life dedicated at its most basic level to emotional healing and a fair amolunt of inner inquiry. While this MAY be true for Mr. Murdoch, at the risk of sounding naive, his high-profile drive for power (while clearly visible in his chart) seems to be counter-productive for a soul with the emotional/relationship-oriented intentions indicated above.

To clarify my questions:  1) Can you help explain a bit more how Pluto in the 7th drives Murdoch's life (as best as we can surmise given what we know)?"

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Jason has done a good job of explaining this so I would only add that a key to understanding it lies within his inner relationship to himself. This is reflected in his S.Node in Libra in the 10th which is ruled by his 2nd House Venus in Aquarius. In turn this is then ruled by his 4th House Uranus in Aries which is conjunct his N.Node, and these are of course ruled by his Mars in Cancer in his 8th and conjunct his 7th House Pluto in a new phase condition. His Venus is also square his Chiron in Taurus in his 5th, where the natural ruler of that Chiron is Venus itself. When we then connect the opposition of his Saturn to his natal Pluto and Mars we can now see the history of his Soul that has lead to these lives of extreme social power. Before those types of lives where lifetimes of great want, of lack, of being in within the social strata that has no power whatsoever. Those types of lifetimes created a deep anger within his Soul, and a tremendous level of envy and jealousy defined by wanting to be in the upper levels of the social strata where he could have that very power, and all that came with that power. In order to do this he observed and studied the ways that others used to do so, observed and studied the very structures of social reality itself in order to figure out a path for himself that would lead to his desired power and great status.

This then of course lead to the recent lifetimes in which that is in fact what took place. And he became incredibly ruthless in the pursuit of his own ambitions defined by the core desire of great power and status, to lord it over others. As a result the end always justified the means used to obtain those ends. And a core psychology within this was of course one of dominance and submission which lead to his great desire of being able to control not only his own destiny, but control the destinies of many, many others. In order to to control the destinies of others that supported his own desire to be in control of his own destiny he learned ways of obtaining information about others that he could essentially use to blackmail them. In his Soul context this is symbolized by his Lucifer in Gemin in his 6th House which of course squares his natal Neptune in Virgo in his 9th, and his Mercury in Pisces in his 4th which is ruled by this Neptune. Mercury is also the ruler of his Lucifer in Gemini in his 6th. The specific symbols for blackmailing others in order to get them to do what he wanted is of course the Mars in his 8th conjunct his 7th House Pluto which are trine his Pisces planets in the 4th, including his Mercury. In essence, he found this very "˜easy' to do.

Because of this way of being he of course has hurt and crushed many, many others along the way. In turn this has lead to tremendous inner storehouse of guilt, the type of guilt that occurs when any Soul violates the inherent Natural Laws set in motion by the Creator of All Things. And it is this guilt that has then lead to your next question.


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2) How would you read this soul's intentions regarding the 4th house emotional healing needs in regards to all the power issues?

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In order to any such healing to take place would require that he get in touch with the deep inner wheelhouse of guilt, and the causes for that natural guilt. In turn, this would require him to accept the responsibility in his own actions: S.Node in his 10th which is ruled by the Venus in the 2nd. This, again, is square in 5th House Chiron in Taurus. These symbols correlate to the fact that his greatest inner wound is in fact in his own inner relationship to himself which reflects his operational Soul dynamics, and the reasons for those dynamics as above and as Jason has correctly pointed out. The depth and intensity of those dynamics as they relate to how he has treated others along the way, of crushing and defeating anyone who got in his way in all kinds of ways, and how he has treated his marriage partners and the children those created along the way, is such that his Soul has in fact desired to avoid accessing any of this to the point that this avoidance has manifested an an inner denial that he has done anything wrong at all. Those Pisces planets in his 4th are in fact ruled by his Neptune in Virgo in his 9th: avoidance and denial of his actual truth. This denial and avoidance is also symbolized by his 12th House Sagittarius Moon which is inconjunct his 8th House Mars in Cancer. This Moon of course is the ruler of his Jupiter in Cancer in his 7th which is also square his Nodal Axis, and his Uranus in his 4th. It's also inconjunct his 2nd House Venus in Aquarius. These symbols all correlate to being detached from his core inner reality, his core inner relationship to himself that is dimly aware, subliminal, of his actual Soul psychology and the reasons, desires, for it.

All of this inner denial and avoidance of his actual inner truth is then compensated for where compensation as an archetype correlates with Sagittarius, the 9th House, and Jupiter. So we can then see graphically that his ways of compensation are to keep himself very busy, the 9th House Neptune in Virgo, that requires him to travel all over the world because of how he has actualized his desires for great social power and position: the nature of his media empire. This is the type of Soul that is so invested in the desire for denial and avoidance that it keeps itself so busy that it reaches the point of exhaustion at the end of every day. When this is combined also through the escape of alcohol, Neptune, the 12th House Moon, he essentially just collapses at the end of the day so that he does not have to deal with all that he is so actively repressing about the core of himself.

One of the additional compensations because of destroying marriage partners, and the children from those prior life marriages, the guilt attendant to this, is to make his business in this life a 'family business': Pluto, Mars in Cancer trining the Pisces planets in his 4th. As a result, in this life, he is trying to atone for some of this past guilt in this way: Pisces/ Virgo. At the same time however he has jettisoned one marriage partner who was getting as old as he was/ is for another women who is about 40 years younger that he is. This is yet another form of denial and avoidance: the fact that he is approaching a Uranus return. So to surround himself now with this young wife so as to make himself feel younger because of.

For him to truly evolve he will keep recreating this skipped step signature until he does so.


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God Bless, Rad