Update: Rebekak Brooks ARRESTED By British Police In "Pre-Arranged Appointment"

WHEN THE FOURTH ESTATE BECOMES THE FIFTH COLUMN — THE FALL OF THE MURDOCH EMPIRE is no longer the "Drip Drip Drip" of revelations characterized by the NON-ALIGNED MEDIA. It is a TORRENT of shockers threatening to breach Murdoch's crumbling levee and drown his media empire worldwide, with far-reaching repercussions that could topple the British government. Who's next? James Murdoch? The "old man" himself? With the resignation of Dow Jones & Co. Wall Street Journal CEO Les Hinton on this side of the pond, how exposed are Murdoch's holdings in America to prosecution under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, as both CYA Republicans and Democrats call for a Justice Department investigation?

When MEDIA goes BAD on such a TITANIC SCALE, it's not just the coverup. It's the loss of the people's reliance (not its trust) in a fundamental part of any independent, democratic state: A FREE PRESS. It's the GREAT UNMASKING of what was hiding in plain sight all along, the convergence of government and media, of the 1970 plot hatched by Roger Ailes in the Nixon White House — a memo entitled “A Plan For Putting the GOP on TV News”— that was the genesis for Fox "News" and became the template which governed every relationship between the Murdoch media empire and government. The extent to which successive Prime Ministers, beginning with Margaret Thatcher through Labor and Conservative governments, colluded with Murdoch's media empire is only now coming to light.

The question is, how much of Rupert Murdoch's influence on the British government directed major policy decisions, among them to follow George W. Bush with FOX's cheerleading full throttle into Iraq? Given that intelligence was doctored to make the case for war; that the "Downing Street Memo" story was broken by a Murdoch paper, the Sunday Times; and the subsequent revelations by Gordon Brown, Tony Blair's Labor Party successor, one can reasonably infer Murdoch discredited Labor to pave the way for the return of Conservatives to power under David Cameron with his even closer ties to the Murdoch Empire.

Rebekah Brooks was arrested "on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications, contrary to Section1(1) Criminal Law Act 1977 and on suspicion of corruption allegations contrary to Section 1 of the Prevention of Corruption Act 1906." Or as Rebekah said in her best FOX Media Corp. Ministry of Truth mode, it was a "pre-arranged appointment." Incidentally, who will be "arresting" Scotland Yard?

The tangled webs we weave are vanishing as swiftly as a Cat's Cradle between our fingers.