Bozo bites

Boris Johnson wants a potential new Londonairport to be named after Margaret Thatcher. Double whammy! More proof, I think, that Boris Johnson functions as a prophylactic for Tory craziness (remember when he positively associated himself with Rupert Murdoch during the Olympics, when no other politician wanted to be near him). This is ULTRA provocative, yet a twinkle and a smile from Boris Johnson makes such things seem less than harmless. He is hardening people to Tory ideas and hardening people with Tory ideas.

Precious moments

News and spews...

Jaz Coleman of Killing Joke has been found in Western Sahara. Tut, the lengths some people went to avoid the Olympics. But the Sahara, in August; are you sure about that? Here’s the Wikipedia page on Western Sahara:. By all accounts it’s a vast, bleak area. It is a disputed territory, part of an ongoing struggle between The Kingdom of Morocco and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, a government in exile. There was a war from 1975 (following the end of Spanish rule) until 1991. A ceasefire was brokered on the agreement Morocco would organise a referendum on independence. Such a referendum has failed to materialise. There was a protest movement in 2010-11, a far-western echo of the Arab Spring.

Less than a sixth of the population thinks the coalition government will last until 2015. Either that’s wishful thinking (and not necessarily left-wing wishful thinking – there are many, far too many people out there who don’t think this government is right-wing enough, hurting the working class enough) or it’s a political misunderstanding.

All three mainstream parties are committed to Thatcherite principles of government. They are committed to these principles against the population and against any democratic formal or informal process if needs be. Disputes about boundary changes or social housing schemes mean nothing next to the fact that the Liberal Democrats will be annihilated at the next general election while the Tories are unlikely to win a majority of seats. They will use as much time as possible to rig the terms of national politics for as long as possible.

Koranon cilaria ozu mahok! Hard line Republican Paul Ryan accidentally hailed by Mitt-for-Brains Romney as “the next president of the United States” is considered by conservatives to be the ideal candidate, including by squeaky clean, mentally competent, octogenarian media magnate Rupert Murdoch.

Laugh, but if in January next year he’s Romney’s organ grinder he’ll be the second most powerful man in the world, a man who opposes healthcare, welfare support, pay equality legislation and abortion even after rape… and a fine mahok to you all.

Micronews

Earlier this year Bozo Johnson's communications chief, Guto Harri, threatened to unleash a newspaper vendetta against the BBC in retaliation for its 'biased' coverage. The examples listed in the email are bizarre in their microscopic focus. Don't bore yourself unravelling the logic behind this, there is none, except that the Tories are using the current political juncture not to govern judciously and fairly in difficult times but to drastically gerrymander the terms of politics for the foreseeable future. If the Mayor of London is allowed to micromanage his (or her) coverage in supposedly independent mass media, we are living in a truly sick society.

But there's more, and it's more interesting. How can this be a plausible threat, for the Mayor of London to use the right-wing press to bring down the British Broadcasting Corporation? Have you been following the Leveson inquiry? This week's theme of investigation is the links between the political and media elite: it should be revealing (Tony Blair was today's star witness, according to him phone calls to Rupert Murdoch in the run up to the Iraq war were "nothing odd").

And finally, if you need any more evidence, just how thick these theives are, Guto Harri is now the communications director for News International.

Piggy parade

Or: whose police? Murdoch's police! The Police Federation marched through London to protect their members privileges, and they are privileges. The mainstream press would like to connect today's public sector strikes with the federation march. The police are not workers, they don't see themselves as workers, they are not clamouring to be part of the TUC and they did not ask for solidarity from the unions, let alone the left. Nor should we have offered it. If you stand with the police you are standing against every kid being harassed on a council estate, against every student hauled before a court on a trumped up charge and against every family trying to get justice for someone killed in police custody. As far as we're concerned no cut to the police is deep enough. The entire force should be disbanded (and before anyone goes "ah-ha" there is the matter of what kind of state do we put in its place, but for now: Disband the Met).

Guilty? Like a puppy sitting next to a pile of poo...

Rupert Murdoch, James Murdoch and their former editor Andy Coulson all face embarrassing new allegations of dishonesty and cover-up after the publication of an explosive letter written by the News of the World's disgraced royal correspondent, Clive Goodman.





In the letter, which was written four years ago but published only on Tuesday, Goodman claims that phone hacking was "widely discussed" at editorial meetings at the paper until Coulson himself banned further references to it; that Coulson offered to let him keep his job if he agreed not to implicate the paper in hacking when he came to court; and that his own hacking was carried out with "the full knowledge and support" of other senior journalists, whom he named.





The claims are acutely troubling for the prime minister, David Cameron, who hired Coulson as his media adviser on the basis that he knew nothing about phone hacking. And they confront Rupert and James Murdoch with the humiliating prospect of being recalled to parliament to justify the evidence which they gave last month on the aftermath of Goodman's allegations.

Here's the link. Good golly if this is true, and who's going to doubt it, our very own Watergate has life in it still.

Phone Hacking Scandal: some facts

1. David Cameron has had more than 26 meetings with senior figures from Rupert Murdoch’s media empire since becoming prime minister. (For a full list of Cameron’s dinners with the media and his guests at Chequers, his private residence, go to wwww.socialistworker.co.uk)

2. Andy Coulson was Cameron’s guest at Chequers in March—two months after disgraced Coulson resigned over phone hacking allegations.
Rebekah Brooks was invited to Chequers twice last year, and James Murdoch once.

3. Brooks urged Cameron to scrap plans to give the job of Director of Communications to a senior BBC journalist. Cameron was told it should go to someone who was “acceptable” to News International. Coulson got the job.

4. The Metropolitan Police employed Neil Wallis, former News of the World executive editor, during the phone hacking inquiry. He “earned” £1,000 a day to advise Sir Paul Stephenson, ex-commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, and senior officer John Yates from October 2009 to September 2010.

5. Stephenson spent five weeks recuperating from an operation at a luxurious health spa in Hertfordshire in January, at the expense of Outside Organisation—a PR firm managed by Neil Wallis. Wallis was arrested last week.

6. News International offered Stephenson hospitality on 15 occasions between April 2007 and March 2010—he accepted 14 times. In one instance, he met senior executives three times in one week.

7. Stephenson and the Metropolitan Police’s director of public affairs, Dick Fedorico, twice tried to convince the Guardian newspaper that Nick Davies’s stories about phone hacking were “over-egged and incorrect”. At meetings in December 2009 and February 2010, the Met’s representatives failed to mention that they were employing Wallis.

8. John Yates was in charge of carrying out “due diligence” on Wallis before the Met hired him to give PR advice. “Wolfman” Wallis was reporting back to News International while he was working for the police on the hacking case.

9. Andy Hayman, chief of the Met’s counter-terrorism unit who ran the
investigation, attended four dinners, lunches and receptions with News of the World editors. This includes a dinner on April 25 2006, while his officers were gathering evidence in the case.Hayman left the Met in December 2007 and was soon hired to write a column for the Times, a News International paper.

10. Hayman had his phone hacked by News International. But he was happy to bug prison visits between Babar Ahmad, who was unjustly accused of acts of terrorism, and his local MP Sadiq Khan.

11. Executives and others at News International enjoy close relationships with Scotland Yard’s top officials. Since the hacking scandal began in 2006, Yates and others regularly dined with editors from News International papers. Stephenson dined with company executives and editors 18 times during the investigation—including on eight occasions with Wallis while he was still working at the News of the World.

12. The MP who questioned Brooks and James Murdoch this week when they appeared before the Culture, Media and Sport committee has close links with News Corporation.
John Whittingdale, the committee’s Tory chair, is an old friend of Les Hinton, who resigned from News Corp on Friday night, and has dined with Brooks.

13. Brooks is to receive a £3.5 million severance package after resigning from News International. Two of the company’s senior lawyers, Tom Crone and Jon Chapman, will receive an estimated £1.5 million each. Colin Myler, the final editor of the News of the World, is understood to be in line for

£2 million.

14. Rebekah Brooks’s PR firm, Bell Pottinger, has previously represented the Bahraini government, Trafigura—the oil company which was fined $1 million for dumping toxic waste in the Ivory Coast—and Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian dictator.

15. Yates is accused of securing Neil Wallis’ daughter a job at the Met.
Yates, Hayman and Fedorico are all being investigated by the IPCC over their links with Wallis.

16. Brooks reduced Gordon Brown to tears when she called to say that the Sun was to run a front page of private details of his baby son’s medical condition.
He omitted to say that afterwards he and his wife attended Brooks’ wedding, organised her birthday party and had her over to Chequers.

17. Piers Morgan, now a CNN broadcaster but formerly editor of the News of the World and the Daily Mirror, was aware of phone hacking during his time in charge of the Mirror. According to Morgan’s autobiography, “Apparently if you don’t change the standard security code that every phone comes with, then anyone can call your number and, if you don’t answer, tap in the standard four digit code to hear all your messages.”

18. In the US, outcry at possible hacking of 9/11 victims’ phones has led the FBI to launch an investigation.

19. News Corp donated $1 million to the US bosses’ organisation, the Chamber of Commerce, last summer. Shortly afterwards, the chamber launched a high-profile campaign to alter the foreign corrupt practices act—the same law that could potentially be brought to bear on News Corp now.

Link

Any more pie?

Policing - a lottery that rewards malicious negligence

John Yates, assistant commissioner, lead counter-terrorism officer, has resigned as a result of the phone hacking scandal. He is being replaced for the time being by Cressida Dick. Ms Dick, we know, has prior experience, helping keep London safe from the scourge of Brazilian electricians. For all she knows it could happen again. If it does certain newspapers will be no doubt be on hand to spread police smears and lies.