Murdoch's Scum Credentials All In Order I See

[Anubis]

Andy Coulson clearly was the lead candidate for the Conservative job. Who could have hoped to compare.

 

Murdoch papers paid out £1m to gag phone-hacking victims | Media | guardian.co.uk

 

Murdoch papers paid £1m to gag phone-hacking victims

 

• News of the World stories led to £700,000 payout to PFA chief executive Gordon Taylor

• Sun editor Rebekah Wade and Conservative communications chief Andy Coulson – both ex-NoW editors – involved

• News International chairman Les Hinton told MPs reporter jailed for phone-hacking was one-off case

 

Nick Davies guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 8 July 2009 17.33 BST

 

 

Rupert Murdoch's News Group Newspapers has paid out more than £1m to settle legal cases that threatened to reveal evidence of his journalists' repeated involvement in the use of criminal methods to get stories.

 

The payments secured secrecy over out-of-court settlements in three cases that threatened to expose evidence of Murdoch journalists using private investigators who illegally hacked into the mobile phone messages of numerous public figures and to gain unlawful access to confidential personal data including tax records, social security files, bank statements and itemised phone bills. Cabinet ministers, MPs, actors and sports stars were all targets of the private investigators.

 

Today, the Guardian reveals details of the suppressed evidence which may open the door to hundreds more legal actions by victims of News Group, the Murdoch company that publishes the News of the World and the Sun, as well as provoking police inquiries into reporters who were involved and the senior executives responsible for them.

 

The evidence also poses difficult questions for:

 

• Conservative leader David Cameron's director of communications, Andy Coulson, who was deputy editor and then editor of the News of the World when, the suppressed evidence shows, journalists for whom he was responsible were engaging in hundreds of apparently illegal acts

 

• Murdoch executives who, albeit in good faith, have misled a parliamentary select committee, the Press Complaints Commission and the public

 

• The Metropolitan police, who did not alert all those whose phones were targeted, and the Crown Prosecution Service, which did not pursue all possible charges against News Group personnel

 

• The Press Complaints Commission, which claimed to have conducted an investigation but failed to uncover any evidence of illegal activity.

 

The suppressed legal cases are linked to the jailing in January 2007 of News of the World reporter Clive Goodman for hacking into the mobile phones of three royal staff, an offence under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. At the time, News International said it knew of no other journalist who was involved in hacking phones and that Goodman had been acting without their knowledge.

 

However, one senior source at the Metropolitan police told the Guardian that during the Goodman inquiry, officers had found evidence of News Group staff using private investigators who hacked into "thousands" of mobile phones. Another source with direct knowledge of the police findings put the figure at "two or three thousand" mobiles. They suggest that MPs from all three parties and cabinet ministers, including former deputy prime minister John Prescott and former culture secretary Tessa Jowell, were among the targets. News International has always maintained that it has no knowledge of phone hacking by anybody acting on its behalf.

 

A private investigator who had been working on contract for News Group, Glenn Mulcaire, was also jailed in January 2007. He admitted hacking into the phones of five other targets, including Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers Association. Among those phones Mulcaire hacked into were the Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes, celebrity PR Max Clifford, model Elle MacPherson and football agent Sky Andrew. News Group denied all knowledge of the hacking, but Taylor last year sued them on the basis that they must have known about it.

 

In documents initially submitted to the high court, News Group executives said the company had not been involved in any way in Mulcaire's hacking of Taylor's phone. They specifically denied keeping any recording or notes of intercepted messages and claimed they had not even been aware of the hacking. However, at the request of Taylor's lawyers, the court ordered the production of detailed evidence from Scotland Yard's inquiry in the Goodman case and also from a separate inquiry by the Information Commissioner into journalists who dishonestly obtain confidential personal records.

 

The Scotland Yard files included paperwork which revealed that, contrary to News Group's initial denial, Mulcaire had provided a recording of the messages on Taylor's phone to a News of the World journalist who had transcribed them and emailed them to a senior reporter; and that a News of the World executive had offered Mulcaire a substantial bonus payment for a story specifically related to the intercepted messages. Several famous figures from the world of football are among those whose messages which were intercepted. Andy Coulson was editing the paper at this time. He told the Guardian this week that he knew nothing about Taylor's legal action, which began after he resigned from the paper.

 

The paperwork from the Information Commission revealed the names of 31 journalists working for the News of the World and the Sun, together with the precise details of government agencies, banks, phone companies and others who were conned into handing over confidential information on politicians, actors, sportsmen and women, musicians and television presenters, all of whom are named in the paperwork. This is an offence under the Data Protection Act unless it is justified by public interest. Senior editors are among the journalists who are implicated. This activity occurred before the mobile phone hacking, at a time when Andy Coulson was deputy, and the editor was Rebekah Wade, now due to become chief executive of News International. The extent of their personal knowledge, if any, is not clear: the News of the World has always insisted that it would not break the law and would use subterfuge only if essential in the public interest.

 

Faced with this evidence, News International changed their position, started offering huge cash payments to settle the case out of court, and finally paid out £700,000 in legal costs and damages on the condition that Taylor signed a gagging clause to prevent him speaking about the case. The payment is believed to have included more than £400,000 in damages, dwarfing the largest previous payment for breach of privacy in the UK, the £60,000 paid by the News of the World for filming Max Mosley naked with prostitutes. News Group then persuaded the court to seal the file on Taylor's case to prevent all public access, even though it contained prima facie evidence of criminal activity.

 

The Scotland Yard paperwork also provided evidence that the News of the World had been involved with Glenn Mulcaire in his hacking the mobile phones of at least two other figures from the world of football. They, too, filed complaints, which were settled earlier this year when News International paid a total of more than £300,000 in damages and costs on condition that they, too, signed gagging clauses.

 

The Guardian's understanding is that the paperwork disclosed by Scotland Yard to Taylor is only a fraction of the total material they gathered on News Group's involvement with Glenn Mulcaire. And it is a matter of record that the Information Commission has refused to release paperwork which implicates national newspaper journalists in thousands of apparently illegal acts.

 

The secrecy around the cases continues. Gordon Taylor declined to make any comment. Clive Goodman, now out of prison, said: "I'm not going to talk. My comment is not even 'no comment'." A spokesman for News International suggested the case did not exist: "This particular case means nothing to anyone here, and I've talked to all the people who would be involved." However, the Information Commission confirms that it disclosed material for the case, and the Guardian has pieced together a detailed account of the evidence.

[Section_31]

He's one of the most frighteningly powerful men alive Murdoch. The NOTW office allegedly contains a safe with pictures and 'embarrassing material' relating to many high ranking public figures and celebrities.

 

He's also single handedly responsible for pushing newspaper journalism into the gutter of cheap smut and shallow prose.

 

One of the few things I still respect about Gordon Brown was the fact he fucked off Blair's weekly meetings with the NOTW editor, but look what happened to him since?

 

It's big brother by proxy, whoever has Murdoch onside is pretty much guarantted to get into power - and stay there.

[Anubis]

The NOTW office allegedly contains a safe with pictures and 'embarrassing material' relating to many high ranking public figures and celebrities.

He sounds like a modern day J Edgar Hoover.

[Section_31]

double post

[Section_31]

New Statesman - Profile: Andy Coulson

 

It was Coulson, hired by Cameron on Osborne’s advice nearly two years ago, who first brought Osborne’s colourful past to public attention. He published a series of stories about the shadow chancellor during his time at the News of the World. If such a picture of Osborne exists, it is probably locked away in the newspaper’s offices, where a dossier of embarrassing material about some of the country’s most prominent figures is reputedly held under lock and key. As a former custodian of secrets that the rich and powerful would rather remain hidden, Coulson is well placed to know whether, as an election approaches, his former employer is in a position to embarrass one of the men who hired him.

 

Wiki

 

In August 2008 David Cameron accepted free flights to hold private talks and attend private parties with Murdoch on his yacht, the Rosehearty.[32] Cameron has declared in the Commons register of interests he accepted a private plane provided by Murdoch's son-in-law, public relations guru Matthew Freud; Cameron has not revealed his talks with Mr Murdoch. The gift of travel in Freud's Gulfstream IV private jet was valued at around £30,000. Others guests attending the "social events" included the then EU trade commissioner Lord Mandelson, the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and co-chairman of NBC Universal Ben Silverman. The Conservatives, a conservative political party in the United Kingdom, are not disclosing what was discussed.

 

 

Murdoch also tried to have a book which was being published by his company Harper Collins edited a few years back because part of it slagged off the Chinese Government, at the time he was trying to grow his news empire there.

 

He really is a shady motherfucker - still, at 78, can't be long to go now!

[Section_31]

Fucking boss piece from John Pilger

 

New Statesman - Lies, damn lies

 

Murdoch’s papers have relentlessly assaulted common truth and decency, but their most successful war has been on journalism itself

 

I met Eddie Spearritt in the Philharmonic pub, overlooking Liverpool. It was a few years after 96 Liverpool football fans had been crushed to death at Hillsborough Stadium, Sheffield, on 15 April 1989. Eddie's son, Adam, aged 14, died in his arms. The "main reason for the disaster", Lord Justice Taylor subsequently reported, was the "failure" of the police, who had herded fans into a lethal pen.

 

“As I lay in my hospital bed," Eddie said, “the hospital staff kept the Sun away from me. It's bad enough when you lose your 14-year-old son because you're treating him to a football match. Nothing can be worse than that. But since then I've had to defend him against all the rubbish printed by the Sun about everyone there being a hooligan and drinking. There was no hooliganism. During 31 days of Lord Justice Taylor's inquiry, no blame was attributed because of alcohol. Adam never touched it in his life."

 

Three days after the disaster, Kelvin MacKenzie, Rupert Murdoch's "favourite editor", sat down and designed the Sun front page, scribbling "THE TRUTH" in huge letters. Beneath it, he wrote three subsidiary headlines: "Some fans picked pockets of victims" . . . "Some fans urinated on the brave cops" . . . "Some fans beat up PC giving kiss of life". All of it was false; MacKenzie was banking on anti-Liverpool prejudice.

 

When sales of the Sun fell by almost 40 per cent on Merseyside, Murdoch ordered his favourite editor to feign penitence. BBC Radio 4 was chosen as his platform. The "sarf London" accent that was integral to MacKenzie's fake persona as an "ordinary punter" was now a contrite, middle-class voice that fitted Radio 4. "I made a rather serious error," said MacKenzie, who has since been back on Radio 4 in a very different mood,aggressively claiming that the Sun's treatment of Hillsborough was merely a "vehicle for others".

 

When we met, Eddie Spearritt mentioned MacKenzie and Murdoch with a dignified anger. So did Joan Traynor, who lost two sons, Christopher and Kevin, whose funeral was invaded by MacKenzie's photographers even though Joan had asked for her family's privacy to be respected. The picture of her sons' coffins on the front page of a paper that had lied about the circumstances of their death so deeply upset her that for years she could barely speak about it.

 

Such relentless inhumanity forms the iceberg beneath the Guardian's current exposé of Murdoch's alleged payment of £1m hush money to those whose phones his News of the World reporters have criminally invaded. "A cultural Chernobyl," is how the German investigative journalist Reiner Luyken, based in London, described Murdoch's effect on British life. Of course, there is a colourful Fleet Street history of lies, damn lies, but no proprietor ever attained the infectious power of Murdoch's putrescence. To public truth and decency and freedom, he is as the dunghill

is to the blowfly. The rich and famous can usually defend themselves with expensive libel actions; but most of Murdoch's victims are people like the Hillsborough parents, who suffer without recourse.

 

The Murdoch "ethos" was demonstrated right from the beginning of his career, as Richard Neville has documented. In 1964, his Sydney tabloid, the Daily Mirror, published the diary of a 14-year-old schoolgirl under the headline, "WE HAVE SCHOOLGIRL'S ORGY DIARY". A 13-year-old boy, who was identified, was expelled from the same school. Soon afterwards, he hanged himself from his mother's clothesline. The "sex diary" was subsequently found to be fake. Soon after Murdoch bought the News of the World in 1971, a strikingly similar episode involving an adolescent diary led to the suicide of a 15-year-old girl. And Murdoch himself said, of the industrial killing of innocent men, women and children in Iraq: "There is going to be collateral damage. And if you really want to be brutal about it, better we get it done now . . ."

 

His most successful war has been on journalism itself. A leading Murdoch retainer, Andrew Neil, the Kelvin MacKenzie of the Sunday Times, conducted one of his master's most notorious smear campaigns against ITV (like the BBC, a "monopoly" standing in Murdoch's way). In 1988, the ITV company Thames Television made Death on the Rock, an investigative documentary that lifted a veil on the British secret state under Margaret Thatcher, describing how an SAS team had murdered four unarmed IRA members in Gibraltar with their hands in the air.

 

The message was clear: Thatcher was willing to use death squads. The Sunday Times and the Sun, side by side in Murdoch's razor-wired Wapping fortress, echoed Thatcher's scurrilous attacks on Thames Television and subjected the principal witness to the murders, Carmen Proetta, to a torrent of lies and personal abuse. She later won £300,000 in libel damages, and a public inquiry vindicated the programme's accuracy and integrity. This did not prevent Thames, an innovative broadcaster, from losing its licence.

 

Murdoch's most obsequious supplicants are politicians, especially New Labour. Having ensured that Murdoch pays minimal tax, and having attended the farewell party of one editor of the Sun, Gordon Brown was recently in full fawn at the wedding of another editor of the same paper. Don Corleone expects nothing less.

 

The hypocrisy, however, is almost magical. In 1995, Murdoch flew Tony and Cherie Blair first-class to Hayman Island, Australia, where the aspiring war criminal spoke about "the need for a new moral purpose in politics", which included the lifting of government regulations on the media. Murdoch shook his hand warmly. The next day the Sun commented: "Mr Blair has vision, he has purpose and he speaks our language on morality and family life."

 

The two are devout Christians, after all.

 

[Stu Monty]

But does any of it surprise us; really? All this democracy and law bullshit pales into insignificance behind cold, hard cash being the deciding factor in power.

 

Anyone see that Blackwater are trying to pull all sorts of acts of secrecy and national security shit over in the US, for an upcoming case. Sorry, it's not Blackwater anymore; they've re-branded, it's US Training or something.

[stevebaby]

Rupert Murdoch is an inflamed haemmorhoid on the anus of journalism. On behalf of the people of Australia, I humbly apologise for allowing this putrescent abcess to escape our shores. We should have hung a burning tyre around his neck when we had the chance.

[masch]

It's worrying just how much influence it has and how many things News Corp has its hand in. Did a little investigation into them in work last week - off the top of my head in addition to its UK "newspapers" and Sky, basically anything with Fox in the title in the USA (20th century fox etc), Wall Street Journal, Factiva, Dow Jones & Company, MySpace, Photobucket, HarperCollins.

 

The list was absolutely huge.

[Section_31]

It's worrying just how much influence it has and how many things News Corp has its hand in. Did a little investigation into them in work last week - off the top of my head in addition to its UK "newspapers" and Sky, basically anything with Fox in the title in the USA (20th century fox etc), Wall Street Journal, Factiva, Dow Jones & Company, MySpace, Photobucket, HarperCollins.

 

The list was absolutely huge.

 

The Government changed competition laws about two months ago, ostensibly to help the newspaper industry survive in the downturn, which basically means the big media groups can divide up whole towns, cities, and even regions among themselves and control all media output exclusively, with the only competition coming from the BBC.

 

The media controls Britain now, you only have to look at how Brown took a battering when he tried to fuck them off (it was the very first thing he did when he replaced Blair, now he's going to S*n editor's weddings) Cameron is their smiling golden boy.

 

If people think that politics is an exclusive Oxbridge club far removed from the realities of everyday life, they should check out the upper echelons of the media, if anything it's even worse.

[Catch22]

Murdoch's papers are shite as are the Express,Mirror, Mail & S**.

 

So don't buy them:In this country alone we have the Telegraph & Guardian from opposite ends of the political spectrum & the FT.

On top of that you can access anyother paper or blog via the 'net.

 

& we have an independant fee-funded TV station which has far more resources than anyother media organisation in the world (see the 'net spending- noone has worked out how to make money providing news on the 'net so noone else can match bbc.co.uk)

 

Freedom of choice & diversity is morally desirable but because it is what markets deliver the left has to hate it.

[Stu Monty]

Markets deliver monopolies or colluding oligopolies. That is the inescapable final destination of completely free markets.

[Catch22]

Markets deliver monopolies or colluding oligopolies. That is the inescapable final destination of completely free markets.

 

No they don't.

 

Tastes are too diverse (look at the different holidays on here from camping to Ibiza & people's love/hatred of them)

 

Moreover those tastes change dramatically over time- After WW2 when almost all food was rationed, olive oil was still in unlimied supply as there was so little demand for it- it was sold as a medicine in the pharmacists!

 

Large companies & beurocratic & can't move quickly enough: MicroSoft & Apple not IBM dominate computers now, VodaFone not BT is the UK's leading 'phone company, Amazon is the main supplier of books, most cafes in teh UK are Starbucks.

Not 1 of those companies existed 30 years ago.

 

Have a look at a list of the top 100 companies in the UK by market cap & see how it changes decade by dedade.

 

Most "blue-chips" from 100 years ago don't exist anymore.

[Stu Monty]

No they don't.

 

Tastes are too diverse (look at the different holidays on here from camping to Ibiza & people's love/hatred of them)

 

Moreover those tastes change dramatically over time- After WW2 when almost all food was rationed, olive oil was still in unlimied supply as there was so little demand for it- it was sold as a medicine in the pharmacists!

 

Large companies & beurocratic & can't move quickly enough: MicroSoft & Apple not IBM dominate computers now, VodaFone not BT is the UK's leading 'phone company, Amazon is the main supplier of books, most cafes in teh UK are Starbucks.

Not 1 of those companies existed 30 years ago.

 

Have a look at a list of the top 100 companies in the UK by market cap & see how it changes decade by dedade.

 

Most "blue-chips" from 100 years ago don't exist anymore.

 

None of those are relevant. They weren't operating under unrestricted market conditions. They were regulated.

 

Completely free markets would end in one large monopoly controlling lots of very different brand offerings for different people.

 

Regulated markets proped up by publicly funded services; that's what's given us the choice on offer today. Not "markets".

[Catch22]

None of those are relevant. They weren't operating under unrestricted market conditions. They were regulated.

 

Completely free markets would end in one large monopoly controlling lots of very different brand offerings for different people.

 

Regulated markets proped up by publicly funded services; that's what's given us the choice on offer today. Not "markets".

 

How did regulations stop Barnes & Noble from being on the 'net?

How did they stop IBM from developing an operating system?

How did they stop Sony from upgrading the Walkman to the i-pod?

How did they stop Woolworths from converting its old-fashioned stores into Starbucks-style coffee shops?

 

So all bar 1 example i gave completely didn't rely on regulations- BT were regulated but i suspect it was their crapness which stopped them moving into mobiles as well as Vodafone.

 

Regulations have had nothing to do with the change in UK demand towards olive oil.

Elizabeth David,foreign travel & awareness of the health benefits did that.

 

There will always be vastly differeing consumer tastes.

A company which provides 1 will have a bad image in another (hence the term 'indie' music.

 

Avis (i think...) even used to run an ad campaign based upon "We're #2, we try harder"

If company A gets a dominant position people deliberately switch to company B (see fashion)

 

Neither of us read a Murdoch papaer not because of regulations but because they are crap.

 

Markets (which obviously require the rule of law, but just that) work.

Moreover they give people choice & when the people are given a choice they often like things that the left-wing intelligensa hate.

 

Other people having a choice,freedom & prosperity: the 3 things the Left hates.

No wonder they hate markets so!

[Stu Monty]

We've done this before. Markets, regulated ones, work for some things, not all. Any success that they have had in the modern world has been propped up by public services. It's ridiculous for them to claim all the glory for any prosperity we have.

 

If you're going to start with all that "the left hates freedom" stuff then we're done. It's beneath bothering with.

[dennis tooth]

All the papers, Independant, Guardian all of them are the same. Some are 'aimed' at middle class, others at lower class, in reality they are all aimed at advertisers as that's where their main revenue comes from.

 

Catch22, if you think that markets don't deliver monopolies I can remember a large number of papers when I was a kid and about half are now left. Capitalism is a pyramid scheme, the most successful survives and takes over, that is the stated effect of it.

If you don't understand that then you do not understand the system, probably as you lived under the system too long you can't see it just as you can't see your own nose.

[dennis tooth]

How did regulations stop Barnes & Noble from being on the 'net?

How did they stop IBM from developing an operating system?

How did they stop Sony from upgrading the Walkman to the i-pod?

How did they stop Woolworths from converting its old-fashioned stores into Starbucks-style coffee shops?

 

So all bar 1 example i gave completely didn't rely on regulations- BT were regulated but i suspect it was their crapness which stopped them moving into mobiles as well as Vodafone.

 

Regulations have had nothing to do with the change in UK demand towards olive oil.

Elizabeth David,foreign travel & awareness of the health benefits did that.

 

There will always be vastly differeing consumer tastes.

A company which provides 1 will have a bad image in another (hence the term 'indie' music.

 

Avis (i think...) even used to run an ad campaign based upon "We're #2, we try harder"

If company A gets a dominant position people deliberately switch to company B (see fashion)

 

Neither of us read a Murdoch papaer not because of regulations but because they are crap.

 

Markets (which obviously require the rule of law, but just that) work.

Moreover they give people choice & when the people are given a choice they often like things that the left-wing intelligensa hate.

 

Other people having a choice,freedom & prosperity: the 3 things the Left hates.

No wonder they hate markets so!

 

Oh dear. I might be some time. I'd put the kettle on lads.

Choice, freedom, prosperity. Hated by the left?

Best make it a whiskey.

[dennis tooth]

How did regulations stop Barnes & Noble from being on the 'net?

How did they stop IBM from developing an operating system?

How did they stop Sony from upgrading the Walkman to the i-pod?

How did they stop Woolworths from converting its old-fashioned stores into Starbucks-style coffee shops?

 

So all bar 1 example i gave completely didn't rely on regulations- BT were regulated but i suspect it was their crapness which stopped them moving into mobiles as well as Vodafone.

 

Regulations have had nothing to do with the change in UK demand towards olive oil.

Elizabeth David,foreign travel & awareness of the health benefits did that.

 

There will always be vastly differeing consumer tastes.

A company which provides 1 will have a bad image in another (hence the term 'indie' music.

 

Avis (i think...) even used to run an ad campaign based upon "We're #2, we try harder"

If company A gets a dominant position people deliberately switch to company B (see fashion)

 

Neither of us read a Murdoch papaer not because of regulations but because they are crap.

Markets (which obviously require the rule of law, but just that) work.

Moreover they give people choice & when the people are given a choice they often like things that the left-wing intelligensa hate.

 

Other people having a choice,freedom & prosperity: the 3 things the Left hates.

No wonder they hate markets so!

 

Er didn't work. Get back to me when you can love.

[Stu Monty]

Just a quick point on the prosperity idea too. The life expectancy for a black male in Baltimore is 64.8 and the life expectancy for the same in Cuba is 76.

 

Live long and prosper.

[Section_31]

Just a quick point on the prosperity idea too. The life expectancy for a black male in Baltimore is 64.8 and the life expectancy for the same in Cuba is 76.

 

Live long and prosper.

 

The reading age is also higher in Cuba than it is in the Miami.

 

Caught a bit of friends before (yeah I know) and one of them was going on about going to Yemen "Oh fuck I've got to leave the good old USA and go the yemen!" and I just thought America must be the most self-deluded society on the planet. Many of those at the bottom can't even get decent medical care and are probably more likely to get shot than somone living in Kabul, yet they thank their masters for it and say God Bless America.

 

I imagine the USA is pretty ace if you've got money, but that's a pretty big if.

[Stu Monty]

The reading age is also higher in Cuba than it is in the Miami.

 

Caught a bit of friends before (yeah I know) and one of them was going on about going to Yemen "Oh fuck I've got to leave the good old USA and go the yemen!" and I just thought America must be the most self-deluded society on the planet. Many of those at the bottom can't even get decent medical care and are probably more likely to get shot than somone living in Kabul, yet they thank their masters for it and say God Bless America.

 

I imagine the USA is pretty ace if you've got money, but that's a pretty big if.

 

The more I read, watch and think about it the more I can't get away from market forces being a human created societal model that is an extention of natural selection. The process will almost certainly lead to the the furtherment of the human race (in that you're constantly trying to go one better and therefore inventing guns, spaceships and the internet) but it also has the same brutal cost for those that don't make the cut. The same exploitation and extermination of the weak or the powerless.

 

I should also note that socialism and communism are also glaringly obvious extentions of natural selection but down a different route. That being the route of all the penguins huddling together so the maximum amount of the group survive.

[airbags]

Not going to get involved but wouldn't it be fairer to compare like with like ie. the average age of death of any American citizen versus the average age of death of a Cuban citizen. Im assuming you went with black male in Baltimore because that's the lowest age of death average in the whole country which isn't really suprising from a cursory glance at the Wire.

 

How about comparing the age of death of a person in Beverley Hills with the age of death of someone in one of Cuba's poorer neighbourhoods (Im aware that they are supposed to be equal and all that yada yada but surely Havana has it's poorer districts just like everyone else).

[Stu Monty]

Not going to get involved but wouldn't it be fairer to compare like with like ie. the average age of death of any American citizen versus the average age of death of a Cuban citizen. Im assuming you went with black male in Baltimore because that's the lowest age of death average in the whole country which isn't really suprising from a cursory glance at the Wire.

 

How about comparing the age of death of a person in Beverley Hills with the age of death of someone in one of Cuba's poorer neighbourhoods (Im aware that they are supposed to be equal and all that yada yada but surely Havana has it's poorer districts just like everyone else).

 

Not really, that would miss the point. I went black male because they are a specific section of society that have been left behind and don't seem to be sharing in this prosperity. Baltimore is a city with the market system and it doesn't seem to be doing a lot for prosperity; that was the point.

 

A quick google came up with Havana as having a life expectancy of 77. Havana is three times the size of Baltimore, but a little smaller then the Metropolitan Area of Baltimore, so not a million miles off.

[Strontium]

Not going to get involved but wouldn't it be fairer to compare like with like ie. the average age of death of any American citizen versus the average age of death of a Cuban citizen.

 

 

Stu is merely employing the inductive fallacy of cherry picking. I am sure he will be happy to have this pointed out to him. No need to thank me Stu! :thumbup: