Picture by Zil

Summary: Amidst allegations and reports that Fox misleads the public on purpose [1], a close look is taken at GOP agenda [2, 3] and the probable reason for the anti-Google vendetta

Yesterday we wrote about Murdoch's role in Microsoft's ruthless fight against Google. Murdoch's role in it goes a long way back [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14] and it's no secret that Murdoch meets Gates when he hangs out with Microsoft executives and other billionaires like himself, including those who distort the record about climate science and those who run PR/investment operations disguised as a charity (Bill Gates and Warren Buffett). A reader informed us that Glenn Beck's recent anti-Google rhetoric may have something to do with his boss, Rupert Murdoch. There is also this new article about it in alternet.org -- an article which is summarised as follows:

Beck has a Google conspiracy theory. What he doesn't tell you is that his boss, Rupert Murdoch, has it in for the search-engine giant.

Microsoft has already destroyed Yahoo! and it then took its search userbase. It's a bit like Nokia; Microsoft would rather destroy companies and take their market share because it cannot create something better. History is full of many examples like this, e.g. Borland, WordPerfect, Netscape. Yahoo! keeps sacking employees just like Nokia in the post-Elop era [1, 2, 3, 4].

Truthfully, we do not endorse Google for its proprietary search services, but for those who do not trust Google, here is another decent option:

Do you want a better, more secure, more private search engine? Give Duckduckgo a try. I’ve been using it almost exclusively for several months now. It’s great. Also, their !Bang feature is awesome and extremely useful.

I tried it earlier this year and I was pleased. But it would be nice to have a truly free/libre algorithm on which to build and combine many search engines of a vast scale. What we have today is insufficient. ⬆

References from the latest news:

1. FCC investigating Fox over its operation of WWOR-TV

   The Federal Communications Commission is investigating News Corp.'s Fox to determine if the company misled the regulatory agency with regards to the operations of its television station WWOR-TV in Seacaucus, N.J.
   
   In a letter sent to Fox on Thursday, the FCC said it needs to determine if Fox and WWOR intentionally provided "material factual information that was incorrect" or is guilty of "intentionally omitting material information."





2. In Defense of Mockery

   I read with profound weariness a piece in Salon by Michael Lind entitled Hey, liberals: Time to give the Beck bashing a rest. Lind is apparently under the impression that (a) Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews engage in “constant mockery” of bloviating right-wing demagogues such as Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann and Glenn Beck, and that (b) this would somehow be a bad thing, because it is likely to backfire on “liberals.”
   
   He could not be more wrong.





3. What the Right-wing Assault on Women, Unions, the Environment, Health Care and PBS Is All About

   The individual issues are all too real: assaults on unions, public employees, women's rights, immigrants, the environment, health care, voting rights, food safety, pensions, prenatal care, science, public broadcasting, and on and on.