Murdoch Vs. Sean Hoare's Strange Death: Warning To Others? Conspiracy?

Its About Time Media Mogul Rupert Murdoch Finally Reaps What He & Fox News Has Sown.

i.e., Dirty Journalism, Racist Views, Racial Discord, Lies, Division, etc., Thus I'm NOT Surprised In The Least Bit Of The Backlash He's Currently Experiencing.

He Bloody Deserves It!

But Wait A Minute!

Just When We Thought Things Couldn't Get Any Worse For Murdoch Sean Hoare, A Journalist Who Blew The Whistle On Murdoch's News Media Empire Destructive Phone Hacking Scheme, Was Recently Found Dead In His London Home.

Could Hoare's Death Be Considered A Warning To Other Whistleblowers & Witnesses?

Would Murdoch Stoop So Low To Do Just About Anything To Save His Empire Or Was Hoare's Death Caused By Suicide?

Can You Say "Godfather"?

Whether Or Not Murdoch's Media Empire Will Be Able To Survive This Horrific Scandal Remains To Be Seen.

Because Despite Murdoch's Attempts To Make This Story Quickly Disappear, I Have A Feeling Its Going To Be The Talk Of Town For Years.

This International Scandal May Also Be What Finally Topples Murdoch's Vast Media Empire.

Stay Tuned As The Murdoch Empire Phone Hacking "Soap Opera/Reality TV Show" Continues.






Sean Hoare knew how destructive the News of the World could be

At a time when the reputation of News of the World journalists is at rock bottom, it needs to be said that the paper's former showbusiness correspondent Sean Hoare, who died on Monday, was a lovely man.

In the saga of the phone-hacking scandal, he distinguished himself by being the first former NoW journalist to come out on the record, telling the New York Times last year that his former friend and editor, Andy Coulson, had actively encouraged him to hack into voicemail.

That took courage. But he had a particularly powerful motive for speaking. He knew how destructive the News of the World could be, not just for the targets of its exposés, but also for the ordinary journalists who worked there, who got caught up in its remorseless drive for headlines.

Explaining why he had spoken out, he told me: "I want to right a wrong, lift the lid on it, the whole culture. I know, we all know, that the hacking and other stuff is endemic. Because there is so much intimidation. In the newsroom, you have people being fired, breaking down in tears, hitting the bottle."

He knew this very well, because he was himself a victim of the News of the World. As a showbusiness reporter, he had lived what he was happy to call a privileged life. But the reality had ruined his physical health: "I was paid to go out and take drugs with rock stars – get drunk with them, take pills with them, take cocaine with them. It was so competitive. You are going to go beyond the call of duty. You are going to do things that no sane man would do. You're in a machine."

While it was happening, he loved it. He came from a working-class background of solid Arsenal supporters, always voted Labour, defined himself specifically as a "clause IV" socialist who still believed in public ownership of the means of production. But, working as a reporter, he suddenly found himself up to his elbows in drugs and delirium.

He rapidly arrived at the Sun's Bizarre column, then run by Coulson. He recalled: "There was a system on the Sun. We broke good stories. I had a good relationship with Andy. He would let me do what I wanted as long as I brought in a story. The brief was, 'I don't give a fuck'."

He was a born reporter. He could always find stories. And, unlike some of his nastier tabloid colleagues, he did not play the bully with his sources. He was naturally a warm, kind man, who could light up a lamp-post with his talk. From Bizarre, he moved to the Sunday People, under Neil Wallis, and then to the News of the World, where Andy Coulson had become deputy editor. And, persistently, he did as he was told and went out on the road with rock stars, befriending them, bingeing with them, pausing only to file his copy.

He made no secret of his massive ingestion of drugs. He told me how he used to start the day with "a rock star's breakfast" – a line of cocaine and a Jack Daniels – usually in the company of a journalist who now occupies a senior position at the Sun. He reckoned he was using three grammes of cocaine a day, spending about £1,000 a week. Plus endless alcohol. Looking back, he could see it had done him enormous damage. But at the time, as he recalled, most of his colleagues were doing it, too.

"Everyone got overconfident. We thought we could do coke, go to Brown's, sit in the Red Room with Paula Yates and Michael Hutchence. Everyone got a bit carried away."

It must have scared the rest of Fleet Street when he started talking – he had bought, sold and snorted cocaine with some of the most powerful names in tabloid journalism. One retains a senior position on the Daily Mirror. "I last saw him in Little Havana," he recalled, "at three in the morning, on his hands and knees. He had lost his cocaine wrap. I said to him, 'This is not really the behaviour we expect of a senior journalist from a great Labour paper.' He said, 'Have you got any fucking drugs?'"

And the voicemail hacking was all part of the great game. The idea that it was a secret, or the work of some "rogue reporter", had him rocking in his chair: "Everyone was doing it. Everybody got a bit carried away with this power that they had. No one came close to catching us." He would hack messages and delete them so the competition could not hear them, or hack messages and swap them with mates on other papers.

In the end, his body would not take it any more. He said he started to have fits, that his liver was in such a terrible state that a doctor told him he must be dead. And, as his health collapsed, he was sacked by the News of the World – by his old friend Coulson.

When he spoke out about the voicemail hacking, some Conservative MPs were quick to smear him, spreading tales of his drug use as though that meant he was dishonest. He was genuinely offended by the lies being told by News International and always willing to help me and other reporters who were trying to expose the truth. He was equally offended when Scotland Yard's former assistant commissioner, John Yates, assigned officers to interview him, not as a witness but as a suspect. They told him anything he said could be used against him, and, to his credit, he refused to have anything to do with them.

His health never recovered. He liked to say that he had stopped drinking, but he would treat himself to some red wine. He liked to say he didn't smoke any more, but he would stop for a cigarette on his way home. For better and worse, he was a Fleet Street man.


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Sources: AP, CNN, Guardian.co.uk, Hollywood Reporter, Youtube, Google Maps

Wikileaks Used As Global Whistle Blower Or Tool For Terrorism? (Videos)

Sources: Forbes.com, RT, Youtube

Bank Of America Prepares For Assange's Wikileaks Attack

Bank of America Executive: We're Preparing For Wikileaks


A senior Bank of America executive Wednesday suggested the company is prepared to deal with a possible release of internal documents by WikiLeaks in part because the bank has been through similar public disclosures before.

Anne Finucane, head of global strategy and marketing for Charlotte-based Bank of America, said in a speech in Boston that the company has already endured grueling government investigations that resulted in the public release of executives' e-mails and other internal documents.

"I don't think there's a company that has had more leaks, more of our information provided to congressional hearings, attorneys general ... etc.," said Finucane, referring to investigations by Congress and regulators over its controversial acquisition of failing investment bank Merrill Lynch in January 2009.

"We have been out there pretty much 24-7, whether those of us who run communications like it or not, and we have learned not only to react, but deal with this as a given," she added.

Among the material that came out during a congressional investigation of Bank of America's Merrill acquisition was an e-mail one bank director wrote to another director about the company's decision to slash its dividend: "Unfortunately, it's screw the shareholders!!" Another note by the same director suggested the company was forced by the government to complete the Merrill deal.

In February, Bank of America agreed to settle a separate investigation with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it failed to properly disclose to investors the size of losses at Merrill Lynch, as well as bonuses Merrill employees would be receiving. The company agreed to pay $150 million and strengthen its corporate governance and disclosure practices.

Finucane spoke Wednesday before a women's networking breakfast sponsored by the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. She made only a fleeting reference to the brewing controversy with WikiLeaks and spoke mainly about how Bank of America tried to respond to the financial crisis, as well as of her own career path to one of the top jobs in the nation's largest bank.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told Forbes magazine last month that the nonprofit group, which released a huge cache of sensitive U.S. diplomatic correspondence this week, plans to release thousands of documents from a major U.S. bank early next year, spurring speculation that Bank of America could be the target.

Assange did not identify the bank. But in a separate interview 13 months ago, Assange told Computerworld magazine that his organization had obtained a five-gigabyte hard drive from an unidentified Bank of America executive. Still, Bank of America said it has no contact with WikiLeaks and is unable to verify the assertion that WikiLeaks has an employee's hard drive.

"We can assume it's us, but we don't know it's us, because we've had no further evidence beyond what we have read and heard," Finucane said.

Finucane is the only member of Bank of America's senior executive committee based in Boston. Chief executive Brian Moynihan lives in Massachusetts, but is officially based in Charlotte.

Finucane's responsibilities include overseeing Bank of America's vast philanthropic efforts. In her speech Wednesday, she said Bank of America has several priorities for its charitable giving: economic development, cultural institutions, and social services. For instance, Finucane noted the bank recently donated $10 million to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, which just opened a new wing to public acclaim.

Overall, Bank of America has said it plans to give away about $12 million by the end of this year to nonprofit organizations and other groups in Massachusetts, up from $9 million a year six years ago when it acquired FleetBoston, then New England's largest bank.

"Happily, we have been able to increase our community relations and philanthropy over the last several years," Finucane said.






Exclusive: WikiLeaks Will Unveil Major Bank Scandal


First WikiLeaks spilled the guts of government.

Next up: The private sector, starting with one major American bank.

In an exclusive interview earlier this month, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told Forbes that his whistleblower site will release tens of thousands of documents from a major U.S. financial firm in early 2011. Assange wouldn’t say exactly what date, what bank, or what documents, but he compared the coming release to the emails that emerged in the Enron trial, a comprehensive look at a corporation’s bad behavior.


Read on....“WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange Wants To Spill Your Corporate Secrets”.


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Sources: Boston.com, CNBC, Emirates247, Forbes.com, Life.com, McClatchy Newspapers, Young Turks, WCNC, Wikipedia, Youtube, Google Maps

North Carolina Labor Dept Found To Be Extremely Slack On Workplace Safety

Federal Reports Chide North & South Carolina On Workplace-Safety Programs


Workplace safety programs run by North Carolina and South Carolina downplay serious safety problems, issue weak fines to violators and fail to properly handle whistleblower complaints, according to reports released by the federal government.

South Carolina's problems are so severe that auditors said increased federal oversight may be needed.

The audits, conducted by the U.S. Labor Department, are part of the federal government's pledge to strengthen its oversight of states that run their own workplace safety programs. About half the states - including the Carolinas - run their own programs, which the law allows as long as they are as effective as the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration in protecting workers.

South Carolina has the nation's lowest average penalties for workplace safety violations, noted Jordan Barab, deputy assistant secretary of labor for OSHA.

"We're very concerned that with the low penalty number, they're not presenting a credible deterrent to employers around the state who cut corners on workplace safety," Barab said.

Lawmakers and officials have grown concerned in recent years over the ability of some state-run programs to protect workers.

In a 2008 investigation into workplace safety in the poultry industry, the Observer found that weak enforcement, minimal fines and declining inspections have allowed companies nationwide to ignore hazards that can kill and injure workers. The series examined injury records from 2003 to early 2007.

Federal audits conducted this year were more intensive than those done in previous years. Auditors examined case files from October 2008 to September 2009.

Both states praised their low injury and illness rates in written statements and said they work hard to protect employees.

Penalties are weak

Among the U.S. Labor Department's findings:

Both Carolinas impose weak penalties when violations are found - an average $281 per serious violation in S.C., compared with $512 in N.C. and $970 by federal OSHA.

North Carolina shaves 10 percent off fines for "cooperation," and state policy "results in lower penalties for serious violations," the report says.

South Carolina cuts fines by 60 percent in exchange for the employer's promise it will improve safe working conditions. But auditors found the state rarely checked to see if problems were fixed, and employers who got the discount were not required to take more steps than other companies to ensure safety.

Compliance officers in the Carolinas understate the severity of problems by misclassifying violations and rarely label problems as "willful" - the most serious degree.

N.C. compliance officers issued only one willful violation in 2009 "due to the belief that it would be too difficult to pass the review process," auditors said. South Carolina had five willful violations.

Auditors said of the N.C. program: "Some violations that would most likely have been classified as serious by federal OSHA were classified as non-serious by the state, and some violations categorized as low or medium severity would have been categorized as high severity by federal OSHA."

Companies receive higher fines when they are cited for serious or willful violations.

North Carolina lets bureaucrats purge documents from case files when they are closed. Removing the documentation limits the state's ability to review a company's history and properly investigate future violations, auditors said.

South Carolina files, meanwhile, lacked narratives explaining items such as a description of the hazard and didn't have contact information for employees interviewed. The report said the files involving one fatality, for example, "did not provide a complete picture of how the accident occurred."

The federal government took both states to task for failing to properly handle cases involving workers who had complained about their employer. It criticized North Carolina for doing only phone interviews, for example.

The Observer investigation found that of the roughly 800 people a year who filed complaints under N.C.'s Retaliatory Employment Discrimination Act, about 1 percent get their jobs back. The state had not taken a case to court on behalf of a worker in seven years. And investigators dismissed cases without interviewing workers. The act prohibits employers from firing or punishing workers for filing worker's compensation claims or complaining about unsafe working conditions.

The reports show little is being done in the Carolinas to deter companies from shortchanging safety, said workplace safety advocate Tom O'Connor, executive director of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health.

"Unfortunately, sometimes the only way to get people's attention is with a significant dollar fine. And there just isn't an adequate deterrent from the low penalties assessed," said O'Connor, who lives in Chapel Hill.

"And if discrimination programs are not effective, then workers don't feel able to express themselves and will keep quiet if they find themselves in a dangerous situation."

The reports, released in the last two weeks, could prove troubling for South Carolina, as auditors noted "inadequate enforcement documentation and state policies that potentially render the program less effective than the federal program."

S.C. official defends program

An S.C. OSHA spokesman, Jim Knight, said in a statement Thursday the state is proud of its record in occupational safety and health.

"Evaluations during the past eight years indicate that we have exceeded expectations and have an effective state program. Nothing has changed in the program, whether staffing levels or enforcement procedures, since the last evaluation in 2009," the statement said.

N.C. OSHA said in a written response it "will make adjustments that are in the best interest of North Carolina. It appears (recommendations included in the report) are procedural in nature and do not directly impact our workplace safety efforts."

The report noted some achievements for N.C. OSHA, including an increase in the number of health inspections, which are more time-consuming and complicated than safety inspections, and for reaching out to Spanish-speaking workers. Construction deaths also fell to 10 in 2009 from 17 in 2008.

The states must respond to OSHA this month.

If states don't adequately address the concerns, Federal OSHA can increase its oversight - or even start proceedings to take over a state program.

"South Carolina has more problems than most of the states," Barab said. "We'll focus very carefully on their corrective action plan and their progress on addressing the problems."


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Sources: McClatchy Newspapers, WRAL, Youtube, Google Maps

R.C. Soles, Another NC Democrat Senator Retiring Following Controversy

NC Senator R.C. Soles Retiring



Sen. R.C. Soles, a Tabor City Democrat, said Wednesday he will not seek re-election next year, a decision that comes three weeks after a Columbus County grand jury found probable cause to indict him for shooting a young man in the leg outside Soles' home in August.

Soles, 75, is the longest serving member of the Senate and, as chairman of the Democratic caucus, a member of the leadership. He is the latest in a string of senior Democrats stepping down that likely change the look and likely the style of how the Senate operates.

"I plan to serve out the remainder of my term with the vigor and diligence my constituents deserve and I will continue to practice law," Soles said in a prepared statement. "Public service is a noble calling and I have tried to live up to the ideals of a true leader."

Soles long was at the center of grumbling in his hometown of Tabor City about young men who were former legal clients and hung around his home or law office. In at least one case, Soles pepper sprayed one of the men and, in others, young men banged or kicked at Soles' door.

In the August incident, Soles shot 22-year-old Thomas Kyle Blackburn, who was allegedly trying to kick in Soles' front door.

Soles' lawyer, Joseph Cheshire of Raleigh, has said the shooting was self-defense. Cheshire and Soles repeatedly have said that Soles has been generous to former clients in hoping to ease them back to a law-abiding life. Soles has denied having sexual relations with any of the young men.





2nd Fired Exec Claims NC Security Co. Connected To Sen. Tony Rand Broke Law


A second former board member for a small, politically connected security gear maker said the company's chairman tried to persuade him to join an insider trading scheme.

Law Enforcement Associates Corp. reported former sales director and board member Martin Perry's claims of multiple legal violations to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Perry said company board chairman and state Sen. Tony Rand, D-N.C., invited him to join a plan to manipulate the company's stock. Perry said he and fired Chief Executive Paul Feldman were interviewed by FBI agents about their claims in September.

A letter Perry wrote to the U.S. Labor Department which outlines the charges closely tracks earlier allegations by Feldman.

Perry, like Feldman, said Raleigh-based LEA also may have violated export laws by working with a company in which LEA founder John Carrington had an ownership interest.

Both the company and Rand denied Perry's allegations.

"It's basically just a rehash" of Feldman's earlier claims, Sen. Tony Rand said Wednesday. "Any allegation of wrongdoing are absolutely untrue."

Rand said LEA's directors plan to meet Thursday, and will likely discuss what an outside attorney has learned about the allegations.

The company said in its filing with the SEC that it does not believe Perry's allegations, "nor does the company believe the resolution of these matters will have any material effect upon the financial statements or other information contained in its reports to the SEC."

LEA said it believes the two former executives were seeking Federal Whistle-Blower Protections available under Federal Securities Law.

Carrington, a former Republican state senator from Raleigh, pleaded guilty in 2005 to violating U.S. export laws when Sirchie Finger Print Laboratories, a company he once headed and that spun off LEA in 2001, illegally shipped more than $1.2 million in equipment to China through middlemen. Carrington agreed to a denial of export privileges for five years.

Perry and Feldman said they warned the LEA directors against the company doing business subsequently with Safe Source Inc., because Carrington had an ownership stake in the company.

Perry and Feldman said dozens of state politicians owned stock in LEA.

Gov. Beverly Perdue bought about $1,000 worth of LEA stock in 2002 when she was lieutenant governor, her spokeswoman said earlier this month. The stock was not listed on her ethics disclosure form until 2006, when its value topped the $10,000 minimum threshold for reporting, spokeswoman Chrissy Pearson told The News & Observer of Raleigh. Perdue still owns every share of the stock she purchased in 2002, Pearson said.

Perdue has asked at least four state agencies to examine nearly $200,000 in buys of surveillance equipment from LEA since Rand became the company's chairman in 2003. Some gear was bought without competitive bidding.

Rand has said he is leaving the Senate this month to become Perdue's parole chief.



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Sources: McClatchy Newspapers, Under The Dome, Miami Herald, NC General Assembly, Google Maps