Best. Steyn. Ever.
MUST read it all. MUST.
Please pass it on.
Posted on 07/08/2011 11:29:06 PM PDT by JLS
Something rather weird happened in London last week. For some time, The Guardian, a liberal, broadsheet, "respectable" newspaper, has been hammering The News Of The World, a populist, tabloid, low-life newspaper, over its employees' penchant for "hacking" the phones of Royals and celebrities – Prince Harry and Hugh Grant, for example. This isn't as forensic as it sounds: Until recently, most British cellphones were sold with the default password set either to 0000 or 1234, and most customers never bothered to change it.
(Excerpt) Read more at ocregister.com ...
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Mark Steyn ping.
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My guess is that News of the World, like most papers, and unlike say, Fox News, was probably losing money, and this just provided a good excuse to shut it down. Rupert Murdock is first and formost about making money.
I’m always a little surprised when Steyn’s dead on commentary doesn’t get a lot of hits.
I presume hacking into a phone voice mail is illegal?
If the Password is only 4 digits it wouldn’t take long to manually hack anyone’s phone once you had their number. But I bet the hackers used computers - that is just easier. You would think people would make them longer than 4 digits but I bet most people don’t know you can make a 15 digit PW if you wanted to.
That article showed people protesting outside the newspaper, calling for Murdoch’s company to be broken up. These people think nothing of taking and destroying what a man spent a lifetime of ingenuity and gumption to put together - yet they would be appalled at the idea to stop funding the BBC (and American equivalents) with taxpayer monies. Makes me angry to think about it!
Well put! An excellent article, as usual.
I was sorry to see The News of the World go, trashy though it may have been. It had been around since 1843. It's sort of like seeing the New York Post (NY's oldest newspaper) suddenly closed down. I guess that's probably their next objective.
Mark Steyn - He is a rock star!
It would get more hits if Mark Steyn's name were in the title of the posted article.I was just talking to my niece, tho, about "Gunrunner" - and, no surprise, she knew nothing about it. Never heard of it.
Lincoln Parish News Online
“What isn’t in the newspapers is often more newsworthy than what is.”
Save the NY Times, the “News of the World” story isn’t on anyone’s radar screen.
Furthermore, it will be reconstituted as a Sunday edition of one of Rupert’s other newspapers.
“I was just talking to my niece (snip) about “Gunrunner” - and, no surprise, she knew nothing about it. Never heard of it.”
I’m astonished by the number of people I’ve spoken with who have never heard of gun runner. If this had happened under GWB, do you think that would be true?
Best. Steyn. Ever.
MUST read it all. MUST.
Please pass it on.
Every time I read or listen to Mark Steyn I feel smarter.
This guy has an amazing way with words.
—bflr—
(The end)
Meanwhile, what did the drug cartels, the recipients of the guns, do with them? Well, they used them to kill at least one member of a third federal agency: Brian Terry of the United States Border Patrol. If that doesn’t bother you, well, they also killed not insignificant numbers of Mexican civilians.
If, by this stage, you’re wondering why U.S. stimulus dollars are being used to stimulate the Mexican coffin industry, consider the dark suspicion of many American gun owners – that the real reason the feds embarked on this murderous scheme was to plant the evidence that the increasing lawlessness on the southern border is the fault of the gun industry and the Second Amendment, and thereby advance its ideological agenda of ever greater gun control.
We’re not talking about hacking a schoolgirl’s cellphone here. Real people are dead. Yet nobody’s going to close down any wing of the vast spendaholic DEATFBI hydra-headed security-state turf-war. And while Eric Holder, the buccaneering attorney general at the center of this wilderness of mirrors, doesn’t yet have as many Distinguished Public Servant of the Year awards as Beverly Hall, judging from his cheerfully upfront obstruction of the congressional investigation, he’s not planning on going anywhere soon.
So, at The News Of The World, every single employee is clearing out his desk. But, at the Atlantic Public Schools, at the DEATFBI, life goes on. A curious contrast. The striking feature of big government, from Athens to Sacramento, is its imperviousness to any kind of accountability – legal, fiscal, electoral, popular.
A media mogul, a bank chairman, an oil executive, a corporate-jet depreciation-claimant are easily demonizable: As President Obama cautioned CEOs a couple of years back, “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”
More fool us. Our pitchforks are misdirected.
Obama is a childish ego. Anyone that bothers to stand up to the freaky kid usally wins. Why people fold so easily is wierd.
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