Saturday, August 30, 2008 

Weekend links.

We continue:

On Alastair Darling being misquoted and telling it straight:

Lib Con / John Band - Bad Chancellor. Bad journalists

Lenin - No shit

Stumbling and Mumbling - Darling is talking nonsense

Ten Percent - Fuk da Kredit Krunch

The Curmudgeon - On Message

In other home news:

Bob Piper - Cameron will modify Blairism

Unity ends the squabble between Sunny and DK over inequality since the 80s

Ben Goldacre, in the first extract from his book, places the blame for the MMR debacle squarely on the media, right where it belongs.

Foreign affairs:

BlairWatch - A letter from Georgia

CiF / Joschka Fischer - Realism about Russia

The Quail - The Mail somehow managed to report Obama's speech to the Democratic Convention before it had been made

Question That - On McCain picking Sarah Palin as his VP

Finally, the Mail reports on the horrors of last night's EastEnders episode:

One viewer, writing on the Points Of View message board on the BBC website, said:
'My wife was physically sick and my son of 13 was brought to tears.'

Last night I watched the brand spanking new Criterion DVD of Pasolini's Salo. The complainant's wife would probably have had a coronary.

Labels: , ,

Share |

8/30/2008 09:56:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, August 29, 2008 

The current state of affairs.

The cliché is that crises seem to develop and take place in slow motion. When it comes to the continuing Russian occupation of Georgian territory outside of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, it's been anything but. Predictions of what was to come have been shown to be wrong in record time: Georgia's chances of joining Nato were said to be dead and buried after Saakashvili's murderous, hot-headed gambit, something proved demonstratively false by the meeting of Nato which looks set to accelerate the process. Additionally, no one thought that South Ossetia and Abkahzia would have their independence or, rather their absorption into Russia declared so quickly, something which President Medvedev started the process of at the beginning of the week, quite possibly in response to the Nato declaration, if not in so many words.

It is therefore probably foolish to make predictions about what is still yet to come, but that's never stopped anyone before. Firstly, for all the talk that this shows Russia awakening from a slumber, or that this means an end to the unipolar world dominated by the United States since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia still remains fundamentally weak, if not even further weakened by the war in a far off place of which we know little. Few in Russia probably expected the vehemence of the response from the West over Georgia, especially considering that beyond a shadow of a doubt it was the Georgian assault on South Ossetia, involving up to 300 gun barrels which started the brief but brutal conflict. This does not even begin to excuse the wholly disproportionate response from Russia, which still continues with the presence at Poti and outside of the breakaway regions, but it does mitigate against complete condemnation.

Indeed, what has occurred so far has been a further hugging from the West of the likes of Ukraine and Poland ever tighter, as shown by Miliband's mostly decent but at times breathtakingly disingenuous speech in the former country. As the Guardian leader noted, Nato has been expanding its role concerning energy security in the region. To believe that Nato does not have a sphere of influence and that its expansion is simply an expression of individual democracies exercising their sovereignty is absurd. Equally absurd is the idea that Russia's next move might be to annexe the Crimea, where again allegedly the country has been distributing passports. For all the hype over the Orange Revolution, Ukraine remains bitterly divided, and might still yet opt for the pro-Russian Yanukovych over Yushchenko, such has been the in-fighting and incompetence of the pro-Western parties.

The one trump card which Russia still holds is its stranglehold over Europe's energy supplies. Germany's policy towards Russia is almost certainly blunted directly because of its reliance on Russian gas. Even this though is in danger of being broken almost directly because of the conflict in Georgia; the Russian economy is increasingly reliant on these very same exports, and as Nosemonkey points out, even if Russia was to cut off supplies, something which simply isn't going to happen, the West would recover. Russia, on the other hand, would continue to die a slow death. For the moment we need each other much more than anyone is willing to admit - and this mitigates against any further action in western Europe.

Increasingly, the precedent for the Russian action and the swift declaration of independence in SO and Abkhazia is Kosovo. It's not a direct parallel because SO and Abk are quite obviously going to be absorbed into Russia proper, rather than become independent statelets like Kosovo, but the declaration of independence for the region at the beginning of this year is both the catalyst and will be used as the justification. For those of us without restive provinces, and despite the Troubles and current disagreements in Northern Ireland over policing, ours no longer really cut the mustard, this was a no-brainer; for Spain, however, still racked by secessionists in both the Basque and Catalan regions, it was also a no-brainer, with them refusing unlike much of the rest of Europe to recognise the new territory. Georgia, too, recognized the potential for where it could lead, with Saakashvili calling the decision hasty. Putin, however, couldn't have predicted the future any better, quite possibly because he knew what may be to come: "undoubtedly, it may entail a whole chain of unpredictable consequences to other regions in the world" that will come back to hit the West "in the face".

For the most part then, for all the changes, much has stayed the same. To believe that this will in any way prevent the US or the US and ourselves from stepping in more or less anywhere outside of Eurasia should there be even the inkling of a "threat" would be naive. With the insurgency apparently stepping up in Somalia, it probably won't be long before US strikes there against "al-Qaida" targets are once again in the news, in a war which is in effect being waged via the Ethiopian occupation, and it's doubtful that even Obama's election would change that. Russia still remains the same paranoid country that it has been since the beginning of the 90s, increasingly encircled but only occasionally striking out in battles that it knows it can win in its own highly diluted "sphere of influence", whether it be Chechnya or now the breakaway provinces of Georgia. Unhelpful and becoming too prominent figures such as Litvinenko and Anna Politkovskaya will continue to be rubbed out. The question has to be whether confrontation is worth it over this issues, and fundamentally, the answer is no. The current path however is that exact confrontation, and in the meantime the wholesale demonisation of Russia beyond that which it deserves will likely continue apace.

Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Share |

8/29/2008 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Scum-watch updates.

If you're wondering where the regular Scum-watches have gone, both this week's posts on the paper are over on the dedicated Sun Lies blog, the first on particularly nonsensical use of figures relating to knife crime and the second, which is a doozy, on the Sun's own readers spotting the huge flaw in its attempt to paint the good burghers of Merthyr Tydfil as work-shy scroungers.

Labels: ,

Share |

8/29/2008 11:54:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, August 28, 2008 

All good hoaxes come to an end.

There was perhaps only two ways in which the "al-Qaida in Britain" story would end: either being completely forgotten after being dismissed as either irrelevant or low-level jihadist supporters messing around, or in those responsible being arrested.

Lancashire police have now brought charges against three men, one of whom has been charged with soliciting murder. It's being made quite apparent that the police or the security services have not foiled any genuine actual plot to kill either Gordon Brown or Tony Blair, just that those behind the message have been caught. The soliciting murder charge is by no means unprecedented - at least one of the Danish embassy protesters was successfully convicted of it - but it still seems potentially over-the-top when seen in the context of online banter which often is extreme and by no means going to be followed through. Since no weapons, let alone explosives have been found in the searches carried out by the police, this further encourages the view that this was nothing more than a serious, but not that serious hoax.

Of course, it might well be that as two of the men were arrested whilst trying to board a plane travelling to Finland, they could well have been going there as a precursor to acquiring materials which might have been used in an attempt to carry out the threat of the original message. Alternatively, and this looks like, on all we know so far, the most obvious explanation, they may just have been three young men sympathetic to the jihadist cause who thought it was a rather spiffing idea to pretend that were members of al-Qaida on a well-known message-board, where, it has to be said, their antics were treated with rather short shrift.

This professing to be members of al-Qaida, when it hardly seems feasible that they actually were, has nonetheless earned Ishaq Kanmi with the additional charge of belonging or professing to belong to al-Qaida. Now, while al-Qaida is a proscribed organisation, it does seem rather extreme for someone only pretending to be a member of the group to be charged with it as an additional offence. Justin seems to think this is not a new addition to our burgeoning terror laws but rather a hangover from the 70s, when it may have been all the rage to suggest you were a member of the IRA. It does though invite comparisons with all the other little Billy Liars and fantasists that inhabit pubs and small towns, claiming to have been members of the SAS or similar while everyone around them just humours them. It is slightly different to claim to be an al-Qaida operative, but it still seems like something incredibly likely to be joked about. Similarly, the charge of inviting support for al-Qaida is probably down to the original message's appeal for other Muslims to join "al-Qaida in Britain" in the holy war, against, well, err, the credibility of other jihadist groups, quite frankly.

The other charges are those similarly vague ones which are recent introductions, the "possession of an article in circumstances which give rise to a reasonable suspicion that possession is for a purpose connected with the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism" which is so widely drawn that it can apply to any number of everyday items which might still be useful were to terrorist to use them. One of the apparently damning pieces of evidence against Hammaad Munshi was that he and his group had "personal details of members of the royal family", or as they're otherwise known, their addresses. I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that the addresses of Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle are not state secrets.

I could of course be completely, additionally wrong about all of this. These men might well have been potentially dangerous - and indeed, we should take seriously all proponents of the jihadist cause, even the more dilettante ones among them - but it seems far more likely that these were rag-tag individuals at the lowest levels imaginable that probably downloaded videos from al-Ekhlass, perhaps contributed, and who thought it was a wizard wheeze to pretend to be the newest al-Qaida franchise, set-up right here in Britain. You can take this in two ways: either you can be glad that even the bottom-feeders amongst the online jihadist community are being watched, and if they step slightly out of line, they'll be picked up and dealt with; or you can be concerned that the ones we perhaps ought to be least worried about are the ones which the police and security services seem to be wasting their time with. After all, the monitoring of MSK and others was apparently curtailed because of more pressing concerns - and look where that led us. "al-Qaida in Britain" has been dissolved - but the real al-Qaida most certainly has not been.

Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,

Share |

8/28/2008 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, August 27, 2008 

No excuses for being Andrew Lansley.

There are, according to Andrew Lansley, no excuses for being fat. Or to be slightly more specific, being obese. Apparently, the idea that biology or environment has any bearing on whether someone is overweight is simply making excuses. Making excuses is bad. As is nannying. Our government does both. That makes the government bad.

This is an extension of Cameron's speech a few weeks back that a lot of people's problems are self-inflicted. To a certain extent this is undeniably true; saying so is not something radically new, or something that has been actively discouraged, despite how the Conservatives have tried to portray it as doing so. It's more simply that somebody noticed that most bristle at being told that everything is entirely their fault; rather that doing so more subtly, not being quite so confrontational and being more feel-good tends to work far better. This isn't political correctness, this is simply being far more sensitive, which is more likely to work.

In fact, Lansley is actually taking it a step further than Cameron by rejecting the idea that there are any excuses. Cameron added:

"Of course, circumstances - where you are born, your neighbourhood, your school, and the choices your parents make - have a huge impact. But social problems are often the consequence of the choices that people make.

Cameron then does indeed believe that both biology and environment have their effect on obesity, which is wise, because they both obviously do.

Ignoring where you were born and what you are born into for half a second, would Lansley agree that there is an excuse for someone being overweight if the medication which they take has a side-effect of weight gain (Yes, bear with me, I'm being rhetorical, I'm sure he would)? After all, that is most certainly an excuse which some could make when they were overweight to begin with, but it could also be a valid one.

Like with Cameron, Lansley again isn't aiming this at the obese members of his own party. It's the nod and the wink - it's not the Fatty Soameses of this world that are the problem, obviously, but rather all those gigantic, wobbling, welded to the pushchair, acne-riddled layabouts that stuff their faces all day and then have the audacity to walk around our towns and cities where other members of the public might see them. Likewise, Lansley must surely agree that there are no excuses for the put upon single-mother, the kind that has to allocate every single penny of her income, the one that shops not at Waitrose or M&S or even Tesco or Sainsbury's, but at Netto, Farmfoods, Iceland, Lidl, etc. The one that doesn't have the time, or energy, to as this person on CiF says, "produce healthy food from basic ingredients". She could do that, if she wanted to be on her feet for another two hours of the day, but why bother when she can buy the economy pizzas, ready meals at however many for £5 and otherwise which can either be popped straight in the oven or straight in the microwave?

Now that we've agreed that there are no excuses whatsoever for being the size of a house, what then are Lansley's suggestions for altering the situation. Let's start with some cod-psychological behavioural theory:

If we are going to defuse the time-bomb of obesity-related ill-health, we must change the behaviour of adults today, as well as our children. Tell people that biology and the environment causes obesity and they are offered an excuse not to change their behaviour. As it is, people who see more fat people around them may themselves be more likely to gain weight. Young people who think many of their friends binge-drink are likely to do so themselves. Girls who think their peers engage in early sex are more likely to do so themselves. Peer pressure and social norms are powerful influences on behaviour and they are classic excuses. We have to take away the excuses.

Quite so. But isn't there also peer pressure not to be fat? Perhaps things have deteriorated still further since I left school, but I'm pretty certain that being overweight was not exactly a barrel of laughs, unless of course you happen to be the barrel and the laughs were directed at you and you laughed along in a feeble attempt to pretend you weren't the butt of the joke. In fact, let's not beat around the bush here: I called fat people fat. You called fat people fat (probably). I was an unpleasant little pustule (and still am) and on one occasion I told a girl that she should consider the Slim Fast plan, thinking this was devastatingly witty. She descended into floods of tears and I became enemy number one with her friends, quite rightly, for a good time afterwards. I felt like a shallow little twat and still do. I'm pretty certain that it's probably much the same in some of the more immature offices across the land, and that those especially overweight have to face up to a fair amount of abuse when they venture out. Do these things therefore balance out, or not? I don't know. I'm pretty sure that they can't simply be dismissed as "excuses", however.

For teenagers, I believe we also have to think specifically how we can deploy leadership, role models and social marketing approaches, not just to warn them about the harmful consequences of risky behaviour, but inspire them with what they can achieve by choosing healthy living. We must not constantly warn people about the negative effects of obesity – instead we must be positive – positive about the fun and benefits to be had from healthy living.

Again, perhaps I'm being a little simple here, but aren't there plenty of role models out there that are anything but overweight? Indeed, I'm struggling to honestly think of someone obese or overweight that's a positive role model, unless we perhaps count a few singers that have emerged recently, such as Adele or those two reality show debutantes, Rik Waller and Michelle McManus. Inspiring is a noble and obvious aim - but it's one that's a hell of a lot harder to do in practice than it is when making a speech.

Today, I propose that our second responsibility deal should be on public health. I have invited Dave Lewis, chairman of Unilever UK, to chair a working group of business representatives, voluntary groups and experts. Together, we will invite views on these proposals and hammer out the details of the deal. Our proposals for the responsibility deal include: supporting EU plans for a mandatory GDA-based front-of-pack food labelling system; industry-led reformulation initiatives and reduction of portion sizes; proportionate regulation on advertising and positive campaigns from the industry and government to promote better diets; a responsible drinking campaign matched by community action projects to address drug abuse, sexually transmitted infections and alcohol abuse, using a proportion of drinks industry advertising budgets and supported by the government; and incentives and a local structure, through business organisations, for small and medium-sized companies to improve the health of their employees, working with business organisations, NHS Plus and the Fitness Industry Association.

Ah, details. On the GDA front, I'm pretty certain that it's either already became law for firms to have similar details on the packaging or have rolled them out voluntarily; the Diet Coke bottle sitting in front of me has the exact scheme described on Lansley's link on the label. This is opposing the so-called traffic light scheme, which while simplistic was far easier to understand and which the Food Standards Agency set-up. Firms like Coke, and supermarkets like Tesco opposed it. On the reformulation initatives and reduction of portion sizes, again, I think most manufacturers have already been responding to that, reducing salt and fat levels, etc. They've probably not done as much as they could, but I can't see how the Conservatives rather than Labour are going to be any more successful in persuading them to do so. On positive campaigns from industry and government, it's not as if the government has not already been doing so: there's a whole Choosing Health section on the Department of Health website, and there's been a White Paper on the subject. There's currently a responsible drinking campaign being run by the government, one which I think is actually rather good, but whether such things ever have any effect is open to question, and the community action project again seems to be the Tories deciding that the voluntary and private sector will pick up the slack, whilst the last proposal just seems to be in there to make up the numbers.

In other words, Lansley seems to be more or less siding with some of the less reputable sides of the food industry in blocking the traffic lights scheme, proposing pretty much all that the government is already doing, and not a lot else. All while being slightly more in your face, less open to the idea that there are reasons for being overweight not just limited to eating too much and not exercising enough, and not offering anything approaching new except a harsher line in rhetoric. Do I really need to keep repeating the bit about the new Blairites, except with a slightly less kind face?

Labels: , , , , ,

Share |

8/27/2008 11:55:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, August 26, 2008 

Going lower than ever thought possible.

Out of all the joys that the internet has brought us, the ability for those with a tendency for hypochondria to self-diagnose themselves via the easy availability of the symptoms for every disease known to man is one of the lesser benefits. Even worse though is those who then take these self-same symptoms and rather than diagnosing themselves, attempt to pin the diseases and disorders on others, especially those involving mental health. This level of sub-Freudian projection is contemptible enough when it's directed against celebrities and others in the public eye, but when it enters political discourse it represents something resembling a new low in gutter-sniping.

Witness then Guido bringing the question completely out into the open, behind the witless low-level building up of the idea which has been going on for several months now. Gordon Brown, fairly and simply, is quite possibly bonkers. The evidence presented for this is weak beyond belief. It amounts to around three things: that Brown was labelled "psychologically flawed" long ago by Blair's briefers during one of the internecine battles between TB and GB; that Brown has been acting strangely, apropos an article by that man noted for his own completely rational and inoffensive behaviour, Bruce Anderson; and lastly, that even by the standards of a politician he's been making increasingly bizarre statements. To this you could add the pathetic diagnoses by the green ink brigade of autism, or Asperger's syndrome.

You don't have to have even the slightest medical training to treat such facile, shallow nonsense with the contempt it deserves. It ought to be remembered however though that this isn't just the imaginings of the usual suspect squad of bloggers getting ever more drunk on their own delusions of grandeur: George Osborne joked when asked by Mary Ann Sieghart whether his own knowledge of dinosaurs when a child was "faintly autistic" by saying "we're not getting into Gordon Brown yet"; and for a while it almost seemed to be Conservative policy to treat Gordon Brown as weird, hence Cameron's description of him as "that strange man in Downing Street".

To give these claims the sort of scrutiny which they don't deserve, we're for a start dealing with highly conflicting descriptions of what Brown genuinely is like. While some may class him as a Stalinist or a control freak, others have talked of his mildness, even warmth in private, and have been disillusioned by his failure to show this in public. Even if we take at face value the stories of Brown's rages, almost all delivered, incidentally, by either Blairites or those predisposed against Brown, of the smashing of mobile phones and otherwise, they don't even begin to be explained by mental illness or autism: rather, this is a person under intense pressure and stress, reacting at times in ways which he doubtless instantly regrets. It might be someone not enjoying the job which they so coveted, but it is not even slightly abnormal, let alone descending into mental ill-health.

More than anything, this perhaps comes down to what you regard as the qualities that a politician should always have on display. We seem increasingly to want our politicians to always be presentable, to always instantly know what to do, and at the same time to be incredibly open with everyone. In short, we never want them to put a foot wrong, be off-message, or be consumed with anything other than constant public service. This, more than anything, is what is currently delivering us identikit politicians, overwhelming upper-middle or upper-class, with next to no experience other than from within political parties, all of whom look more or less the same and indeed, offer more or the less the same. They can deliver a speech brilliantly, pretend to empathise, emerge as brain-shatteringly normal or at least act like it, and pass the barbecue test, but none of this qualifies them in the slightest to actually run a country. Surely we ought to have learned this lesson by now, whether by the examples of either Bush or Blair, yet we seem more than ever to lap up the spin we so profess to detest while railing against the outsider, the abnormal, those who don't seem to fit in.

Surely the greatest example of how you don't always need to be of complete sound mind, even if you are, when in a position of such authority is Churchill. Everyone is aware of his life-long battle with depression, of the "Black Dog" as he called it, yet its effects did not prevent him from serving as arguably the greatest prime minister this country has ever had.

This is not of course to suggest that Brown is on anywhere near the same plain as Churchill; he quite obviously is not. Yet the whispering about his own mental ill-health, completely unsubstantiated, is designed to put the final nail in his coffin, to ostracise him completely, to persecute him for daring to be anything other than he really is. The political reality Brown has to face is that he never forced his hand early enough to force Blair out when he could still have averted Labour's apparent inexorable decline. However much some want to pin all the blame solely on his shoulders for the economic weather we are now facing, the main opposition party cannot even begin to explain what things it would have done differently to Labour, or what it would have cut or not funded to the same extent as that as Brown did. He has chosen the entirely wrong policies to pursue since becoming prime minister, such as 42 days detention and the expansion of the school academy system, not to mention the 10p tax rate debacle, but there is no evidence whatsoever, indeed, some to the contrary, that another leader would do any better. The Conservatives are heading back to power, but if they or their cyphers think that they'll earn any kudos for descending to the politics of the sewer, lower even than that which New Labour has at times sunk, then they are certainly sorely mistaken.

Related:
Lib Con - The 'Gordon Brown is insane' meme

Labels: , , , , , ,

Share |

8/26/2008 09:09:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, August 25, 2008 

A portent of things to come.


At times, this moniker I've chosen doesn't seem quite right. For someone who apparently thinks of this isle as septic, I seem remarkably unconcerned about its current state. After all, I repeatedly argue that despite the claims of the Conservatives and the tabloids that our society, for all its faults and deficiencies, is not broken. I never fail to marvel that those predisposed to empty, shallow patriotism actually seem to hate this country far more than those constantly accused of betraying it and bringing it to where it is now. My own pointless, self-serving, delusional rage is directed at other targets, for better or worse.

The Olympics ought to have been everything I've been institutionally designed to loathe. Orwell effortlessly exposed the essential pointlessness of the ranking of one person better than another at some insufferable activity in his Sporting Spirit essay. What he would have made of the obscenity which is the Premier League - where one player who can kick a ball into a net slightly more accurately than another and is in return paid more than some people will ever earn in a lifetime for less than two hours' work - is difficult to imagine. 16 days of this garbage, at immense, unimaginable cost, courtesy of one of the most despicable regimes on the planet - and that's just the IOC, never mind China - should have been over two weeks to forget.

And yet, you couldn't help but be overwhelmed by the show which the Chinese put on at both the opening and closing ceremonies. Yes, this was undoubtedly something which only the most vile dictatorship could both organise and justify, where a slightly less attractive child was elbowed aside lest anyone be horrified by her slightly not straight teeth, where the "Great Leap Forward" was strangely absent from the presented version of Chinese history, and where the contemptible idea of "protest zones" actually resulted in two old women being sentenced to re-education through labour, but you could simply not object to the Chinese having the right to put on such a show. It would have been great to have seen some more protests, especially from athletes themselves, putting further to shame those who criticised those who attempted to stop the torch relay, but when they were such onerous potential punishments for those who did, you can't blame them either for not doing so.

For those of us who went against the grain and wanted the Olympics here as much as we'd like to spend the rest of our lives in the company of Tessa Jowell, it sets a challenge, as does the success of our athletes. Somehow, whether we like it or not, or want to or not, we have to at least put on something which if not equal to the last couple of weeks, at least doesn't embarrass us by comparison.

The problem therefore is that we have such complete incompetents, morons and nonentities in charge at the moment. Behold our 8 minutes yesterday at the closing ceremony. It was never going to be great, let's face it, but it would have been nice if it hadn't been the unmitigated disaster that it was. Uncomfortably, it also has to be admitted that this is not the result of the aforementioned individuals in charge. This was British "culture" writ large, or at least the popular side of it: a double-decker bus, which for some unfathomable reason unfolded itself; a winner of a fucking talent contest; an old man playing a song from the 70s, badly; the most overrated and unaccountably famous man to have ever walked on a pair of legs, kicking a football to no one or to nowhere in particular; a dance troupe performing the worst routine the world has seen since the Black and White Minstrel Show was cancelled; oh, and who could possibly forget the smug, rotund twat that couldn't even wave a flag properly?

This, world, is our island nation. In fairness, Marina Hyde says that she watched the last few handovers and that they were no better than our meagre effort. The funniest thing though is that Boris Johnson and Downing Street were so flabbergasted by the "mistake" of the video which accompanied our 8 minutes of madness featuring Marcus Harvey's child hand-print painting of Myra Hindley. Out of the entirety of our show, that could quite easily be classified as the finest moment, a genuine work of art, going against public opinion which annoyed all the right people.

That ought to be what we base our own games' ceremonies around. Not puerile, semi-ironic stereotypical nonsense which just shows the West as a whole to be completely out of ideas and beholden only to the cult of worthless celebrity, but genuinely innovatory and potentially avant-garde politicking which ignores the advice of those who have already brought us so low. This is where those in charge will fail us; would any other country on the planet put in charge of the games a woman who can't remember little things like whether her husband was taking out a new mortgage, or a man who could rival Tory Boy himself for wit and intellect? A taster for what's to come, apart from in China itself, was presented outside Buckingham Palace. This was the "Visa 2012 handover party", just to prove that the curse of sponsorship will not just be confined to the games themselves. And what a line-up they put on! Not content with just one unspeakably awful band being involved, they chose three just to be sure: The Feeling, Scouting for Girls and McFly. You know that something has gone terribly, horrifically, child-murderingly wrong when the best artist on the bill is Katherine Jenkins; and one opera performer wasn't enough either, as she just had to be joined by Il Divo. And all around, that 2012 logo, so brilliantly conceived at immense cost by Wolff Olins, set to haunt our nightmares for the next four years and beyond.

If you think that things are bad now, it's worth remembering that within 2 years it'll be the new Blairite Conservative party that'll be in charge. David Cameron, in his past life spent his time defending the shit on a stick served up by Carlton, so at least he'll be handy when it comes to the abortion to follow. As for his taste in music, he informed Dylan Jones that he had purchased albums by both Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse and couldn't choose between them. Alongside him will be the snot-nosed cocaine-hoovering Gideon Osborne, with a face so punchable that by then the entire country would choose to have him become Team GB's newest and least trained boxing sensation. You can imagine it already, can't you? The countries parading to the strains of "She's so Lovely", followed by the main event, where the corpse of Winehouse is re-animated for her last ever gig. Septic isle indeed.

Labels: , , , ,

Share |

8/25/2008 09:24:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Fuck Fox News.

Quite possibly the greatest thing ever:

Labels: ,

Share |

8/25/2008 09:14:00 PM | | | links to this post

Saturday, August 23, 2008 

Weekend links.

The now becoming regular weekend round-up of sorts. For the story behind the rather strange picture, see here.

Starting with foreign affairs:

Chick Yog - Gordon Brown is right on Afghanistan

Lib Con/Conor Foley - Faith, reason and foreign policy

Lenin and Blood and Treasure on Bernard Henri-Levy's trip to Georgia.

Nosemonkey - Russia: History and Humiliation.

Shiraz Socialist - Concluding the sectarian rumpus over an article by an Alliance for Workers' Liberty member which some took as defending an Israeli nuclear attack on Iran.

The Daily (Maybe) - Obama's foreign policy is not a weakness

Simon Jenkins - We tilt at windmills as world war looms

Domestic:

New Statesman / Brian Cathcart - More on the Book of Dave

Stumbling and Mumbling - 16 years of unbroken growth? No

Anton Vowl on absolute top form - first on Richard Littlecock and general tabloid racism, then more specifically on racism from the Mail, and finally from the utterly despicable Express.

Minette Marrin and Matthew Norman both comment on the return of Gary Glitter and the tabloid obsession with him. More than anything, what's apparent is that he adores the attention; if the press really wants him to suffer, the best thing it could do would be to forget he even exists.

Finally, via PDF, the fuzzy spot gives a unique send off to a friend by disposing of his pornography, taking it to where it truly belongs - in the woods and undergrowth where the next generation can find it.

Labels: , ,

Share |

8/23/2008 10:36:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, August 22, 2008 

al-Qaida in Britain return.

It's interesting to say the least that the BBC are reporting that the arrests made in Lancashire last week are connected to the investigation into the supposed setting up of "al-Qaida in Britain". You might recall that this got certain sections of the media very excited back in January, after a message was posted on the al-Ekhlass jihadist forum which threatened both Gordon Brown and Tony Blair with death if British troops weren't withdrawn from Afghanistan and Iraq by the end of March. As both are still very much with us and there hasn't been even the sniff of a major attack for over a year, the scepticism with which it was treated outside of the confines of Newsnight and the Times seems to have been very much warranted.

The three men arrested, all in their early twenties, were apparently about to travel to that well-known hot-bed of Islamic militancy, Finland. The ages of the men perhaps further gives the game away: if this truly was another franchise of al-Qaida setting itself up, it hardly seems likely that they would have chosen three individuals hardly out of nappies to head it. From the sketches of what we know about the offshoots which have spread across the Muslim world, the leaders of the groups have tended to be veterans of past conflicts, or at least long-time adherents to the takfirist/Salafist ideology which underpins al-Qaida's thought processes. While al-Zarqawi, former leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, now the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq, only turned up in Afghanistan after the fighting had finished against the Soviets in the 80s, he was still considered a veteran. His successor (or at least considered real successor, with Abu Omar al-Baghdadi as a figurehead, Masri serving as ISI's "minister for war"), presumed to Abu Ayyub al-Masri, was a member of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, an organisation formerly helmed by Ayman al-Zahawiri himself. Elsewhere, formerly independent radical groups have pledged allegiance to al-Qaida, such as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat in Algeria, now known as al-Qaida in the Islamic Mahgreb, keeping their leadership intact.

As a security source said at the time, this was always likely to be the work of fantasists dreaming about truly belonging to al-Qaida. The short shrift their proclamations were given on al-Ekhlass further underlined how even amongst their apparent peers they were viewed as being bullshit artists. If it does indeed turn out these three were responsible, then it will only likely further show the amateurish nature of the current "radicals" in this country.

Labels: , , , , ,

Share |

8/22/2008 11:18:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, August 21, 2008 

Understanding radicalisation.

The MI5 report "leaked" to the Guardian, titled Understanding radicalisation and violent extremism in the UK, does the reassuring job of telling you little which you didn't already know while confirming just that which you did.

Firstly, it makes clear the idea that that there a number of extremist preachers doing most of the radicalising, or even brainwashing is either completely out-of-date, if it ever was the case. Rather, it's what a number of individuals have been arguing for quite some time: that those who become radicalised are often first exposed to extremist material online, become engaged in those communities, but also often have to have some sort of real world link to either a charismatic or popular local figure also versed in radical Islam. Once inside such small autonomous groupings, the emotional reward of belonging comes into play, giving meaning to a life which might have been up till then wholly lacking in it, with the other members almost becoming like an extended family, similar to criminal gangs.

Perhaps the ultimate example of this in action could be the 7/7 bombers. Whilst the ringleader of the 9/11 attacks, Mohamed Atta, has since been portrayed as an angry self-obsessed sexually frustrated, even constipated psychopath, almost the opposite is the case when you consider Mohammad Sidique Khan, the alleged 7/7 ringleader. On the face of it, MSK had everything to live for: his daughter had only just past her 1st birthday, he had previously worked as a teaching assistant and youth worker, and very few people generally had a bad word to say about him. He appears to have been conscientious, charismatic and well-liked; everything which ultimately led to those around him deciding to end their lives whilst murdering others around them.

The idea that MSK was after the promised 72 virgins for martyrs doesn't seem convincing when he was so clearly devoted both to his child and his wife; he was not, perhaps unlike the other bombers, stuck in dead-end, unrewarding jobs and so frustrated with his lot in life; and whilst he didn't talk about his religious beliefs to many people, he was certainly devout without being overbearing. He played the role of the gatherer, the charismatic leader which those around him looked up to and enjoyed the company of. The abiding image we have of him, outside of the few other video clips, including the one where he says goodbye, movingly, to his daughter, is the "martyrdom video" he recorded which was subsequently released by As-Sahab, al-Qaida's media arm. His self-serving justifications, now all too familiar, belie the man that he clearly was in private.

Also noted in the report that by no means are those who become radicalised well versed in Islam in its totality. Indeed, few are probably anywhere near as versed as this Islamist blogger suggests for training recruits, and that is mostly a collection of the familiar radical preachers. Probably closer would be the suggestions made by this forum inhabitant, both courtesy of the excellent Jihadica blog. While opinion is divided over whether Islam is inherently violent, and neither side should be dismissed out of hand, it's probably telling that those who have emerged from radical groups have done so only after they have properly assessed a far wider spectrum of theological thought, Ed Husain, Maajid Nawaz et al. Rachel North, who has more reason than most for wanting to get to the very bottom of what motivates radicalisation and subsequently terrorism, has reported that Atila Ahmet, one of those recently jailed as part of the "paintball jihad" had to be segregated from other extremists, due to his studies into Islam and renunication of his past beliefs.

Additionally left on the myth heap is the idea that all of those radicalised or involved in extremism are asylum seekers, when half of those evaluated by MI5 were born here, with the other half mostly immigrating here mainly for economic reasons, that poverty is not an issue, as shown by the amount of those stuck in "McJobs" despite in many cases having decent qualifications, and that only those who are "pure" in their past behaviour are eligible, is if that wasn't laughable enough considering the criminal schemes which those who have carried out attacks have indulged in. Also doubtful is the claim by one group which suggested that those raided often didn't have any pornography on their computers when they were searched; the report suggests that despite it being generally being considered haram to consume alcohol in Islam, some were drinkers, drug-takers and even used prostitutes, although again the 9/11 example of some of the attackers visiting a strip club the night before also should have put paid to that one. Some of this could perhaps be a result of the jihadis adopting the ideology of extremist groups such as Takfir wal-Hirja, whose members "blended in" by shaving their beards, drinking, etc, although again, it might just be that like everyone else, jihadis can't live up to their own moral standards and so can be seen as hypocrites.

There are a couple of things that do appear to be missing from the report however. There doesn't seem to be any mention, for example, of the role that foreign policy plays in the radicalisation progress. Whilst we should never fall into the trap of dismissing terrorism as being purely down to our own actions in countries considered Muslim states, it would be equally naive to dismiss the idea that it has no role whatsoever. Yet nowhere, at least in the Guardian report of the document, does it allude to our actions in either Afghanistan or Iraq, which seems strange, especially when you consider that the security services themselves warned that action in the latter would lead directly to an increase in attacks. Also, perhaps less suprisingly, there doesn't seem to be any reference to the security services' own role in helping radicalisation along. Only today we learn indisputably that MI5 were involved in the interrogation of Binyam Mohamed, currently languishing in Guantanamo and potentially facing execution, which led to his horrendous torture in both Pakistan and Morocco. Yesterday I mentioned the role of MI5 in the rendition of Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil al-Banna, both of whom had had direct relations with the service. This is without also mentioning the unsubtle actions of the police, for instance in the raid on Forest Gate, which contributes to the victimhood mentality which most certainly is a part of radicalisation. The report also makes clear that this is not just a mentality or illusion; racism, discrimination, inequality, "mainstream UK media coverage that perpetuates negative stereotypes of Muslims", all play a role which is heightened and repeated again and again until the only response is to strike back physically, with the religious ideology as the justification.

If all this suggests that the fight against terrorism and radicalisation is as infinitely complex as the process itself is, then it doesn't necessarily need to be so. What is clear is that the heavy-handed government approach is still at the moment part of the problem rather than the solution. Also unhelpful is the continuing demonisation of Islam as a whole, as shown recently by Peter Oborne (PDF). Instead, as if it wasn't already obvious, the fight has to be led from inside and within rather than from above. Organisations like the Quilliam Foundation are almost certainly part of the mix, although they could do with turning down the rhetoric a shade, or at least Ed Husain could. The security services need to end their complicity in torture and rendition, if they have not already. Subtlety, rather than constant new big initiatives and huge police operations, especially when accompanied by egregious exaggeration are also key.

If we exclude the apparent failed attempt by the convert in Exeter, then there hasn't been a major foiled plot or failed, serious attempt at a terrorist attack in this country now for over a year. The vast majority of those who do become radicalised in any case are mostly not interested in attacking Britain; their concerns are more with either fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan or any of the other current jihadi hot spots. The real worry might well be when those who have graduated from those "universities of terrorism" potentially return, and we can hardly say then that we were not in any way responsible for the blow-back.

Related:
Spy Blog - Whistleblower leak or propaganda briefing?

Labels: , , , , , ,

Share |

8/21/2008 09:44:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, August 20, 2008 

The political equivalent of Soylent Green.


There are two ways to look at George Osborne and the Tories' latest kite-flying exercise, this time on social justice, equality and fairness: you can accept that it takes a great degree of courage when very few dispute that under the Conservatives inequality sky-rocketed to levels which hadn't been seen since the early 70s, that it's the Tories recognising their past mistakes and moving onto the New Labour agenda; or you can just be staggered by the chutzpah from a group of politicians that don't seem to have any limits to how far they will go to prove that they really, honestly, truly care about subjects which they previously had very little time for.

On the basis of Osborne's article, it's difficult not to come to the second conclusion. It's with a piece with most of the recent articles by the Conservatives that have appeared in the Graun - big on rhetoric, minuscule on actual policy. The one thing that Osborne's has going for it is that unlike Oliver Letwin, who managed to write over 600 words without naming one specific policy, he actually suggests what the Tories would actually do were they to win power. The problem is that we've heard it all before multiple times, and indeed, some of it is what Yvette Cooper covered in her piece on Monday.

Instead, what we have is mostly the same old mood music, the speaking your weight which so grates, especially when it comes from someone like Osborne. This week's Private Eye, quoting from the Conservative document "A Failed Generation", dealing with the idea that schools have to be the "engines of social mobility - where talent and hard work, not background, determine success" notes that the self-same Conservative shadow cabinet which supposedly drew it up contains no less than 14 Old Etonians. Osborne himself is an Old Pauline. It's the sort of education you require to be to able say, without moments of doubt, that "after a long and bitter ideological argument over two centuries, ... the free market economy is the fairest way of rewarding people for their efforts." The new Conservatives however, being caring and sharing, now accept that "unfettered free markets are also flawed."

It would of course be lovely if the Conservatives had came to that conclusion, even if did further constrict the ideological space the three main parties are fighting over. Yet this sudden acknowledgement that unfettered free markets are also flawed seems to be incredibly opportunistic: only last year John Redwood announced his unreconciled belief in the "trickle down theory" and also proposed removing all the current "red tape" surrounding mortgages, right at the time when the unsustainable lunacy of 115% or higher mortgages has brought the likes of Northern Rock so low. In any case, Osborne doesn't actually say what the Tories would do to tame the free market; he only mentions a "robust framework". Yet isn't that exactly the red tape which the Conservatives and business so despise? He mentions also flexible working and a charge on non-domiciles, but with again without providing any details on either.

The same goes for redistribution, which Osborne believes has failed. The Conservatives, the supposed party of radical economic reform, or at least since the days of Thatcher, again don't offer an alternative here. As has been argued before here and elsewhere, the best possible alternative policy is to abolish tax credits and raise the lowest earners out of tax altogether, at the same time instituting a basic citizens' income and raising the top rates for the highest earners, or at least those of over £100,000 a year, and also cracking down far far harder on tax evasion, which by some estimates costs more than £25bn a year in lost revenue, far above that on benefit fraud and through overpayments on tax credits. All Osborne is offering are the same crackdowns on the sick and the unemployed, with an ever harsher regime that that envisioned under Purnell.

Osborne though perhaps really drops himself in it by mentioning fairness between generations. While this is a dig at the huge borrowing, it also brings to mind another tax change which the Tories have promised, that on inheritance. Their raising of threshold to £1 million is one of the only few firm pledges which the party has made, and while it goes down well in middle England, where most seem to be the under the impression that they'll be paying while it only affects 6%, and will even less considering the drop in house prices and the subsequent raises which the government has introduced, it will also mean a further drop in the receipts that the Conservatives will have to work with, as well as backing background rather talent and hard work throughout the generations.

You know full well though that none of this really matters. The Guardian's comment pages have only become more bulging with Tories of late because they think that they need to be slightly less dogmatic than in the past in order to dispense with the fusty old image of themselves not caring in the slightest about things like social mobility. It's also designed to annoy their own grassroots, exactly as New Labour and Tony Blair so often did. He seemed happiest not when he was fighting the opposite party, but instead his own backbenchers, because it so delighted the right-wing press. Here was someone who was doing their job for them, even if the policies were perhaps a bit to the left of what they would like. The difference here is that the promises are so vague as to be meaningless. No one for a moment believes that if Osborne becomes the next chancellor he'll be making many more speeches to the Demos thinktank; no, this is just another step in the public relations battle, the phony war between Labour and the Conservatives over who can occupy the tiniest piece of ground you've ever seen, situated somewhere to the right of centre on the political compass. Russia and Georgia has nothing on this.

Once again, the political choice we are left with, at the exact same time when the politicians themselves so emphasise choice in every sector but their own, is little to non-existent. Would you like James Purnell for your welfare policy Sir, with his slightly less sinister grin and tight fist, or would you prefer Chris Grayling, with his forced smile and glint in his eye? The British political scene really is an unpleasant, claustrophobic place to be in when the most attractive party looks, from here at least, to be the Liberal Democrats. And even their leader and their policies look to be degrading into the same mulch. Soylent Green for you Sir? Honestly, it's delicious.

Update: This has been posted over on Lib Con, where there are more comments. Tom Freemania also has an excellent fisk of the Conservative document underpinning Obsorne's article and speech.

Labels: , , , , , ,

Share |

8/20/2008 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Dour.

Dour prime minister's team respond to a jokey petition with a jokey video that likely took all of 10 minutes to put together and cost precisely nothing. Dour bloggers and Tories respond by being more dour than the dourest man on Earth. World continues to turn while Dizzy's face goes a familiar shade of red.

Labels: , ,

Share |

8/20/2008 11:08:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Scum-watch: What a difference a year makes part two.

Having wished that Jade Goody, described as ghastly and a vile pig-ignorant racist bully that will "hopefully now slither back under the rock from where she crawled", the Sun devotes not one, but two, three, four, five, six articles on her in today's paper, having helpfully been diagnosed as suffering from cancer during the silly season.

The paper's leader takes a remarkably different tone:

JADE Goody has upset some people in her meteoric career as a Big Brother celeb.

None less than a newspaper which decreed that the plebiscite for Jade to be kicked out of the Celebrity Big Brother house was the most important vote since the general election. There's nothing quite like a sense of perspective, is there?

But both critics and fans will wish her well as she arrives home from India to battle the Big C.

First to offer support was co-star Shilpa Shetty who put their “racism” clash aside and offered prayers for Jade’s recovery.


Ah, so the vile pig-ignorant racist is now so rehabilitated that the spat between Shetty and Goody can be described as "racism". Poppadom, anyone?


As The Sun has revealed, Jade’s first fear is not for herself but for her children.

The ex-dental nurse has spent her life beating the odds.

We believe her family will lend her the strength to win this struggle, too.


Indeed, she's succeeded in getting the Sun newspaper to change its mind, which is a very rare event. Isn't it incredible what cancer can do for you?

Elsewhere, we've discussed previously the incredibly strange fact that the Sun tends to big-up MySpace while it prints stories about Facebook which tend to be less positive, and today is no exception. The Sun Online editor has decided that this rather dull story about someone tracing his family through MurdochSpace is worthy of a position only slightly below the main stories. Considering it's not even written by a Sun hack, rather a "Staff Reporter", it's all a rather rum do.

And finally, the award for stinking hypocrisy goes too...

WELL-MEANING parents are wasting good money on so-called multi-vitamins.

It turns out they are little more than sweets with tiny levels of nutrients — and the only healthy thing is the manufacturers’ profits.

They should be thoroughly ashamed of playing on parents’ fears.


The Sun would of course never play on parents' fears:

Labels: , , , , , , ,

Share |

8/20/2008 09:58:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Alternative answers to asinine questions.

MI6 are apparently so desperate for operational officers that they've taken to advertising on the front page of the Grauniad.

The advert reads:

"There are three strangers in the room that you need on your side. How do you get them to warm to you?"

"Could you be an operational officer?"

"www.mi6officers.co.uk"


Well, failing getting them on your side, you could do what MI6 (SIS) and its sister organisation MI5 did in the cases of Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil al-Banna. Having confronted al-Banna at his home and failing to convince him to spy for them, MI5 subsequently informed the Americans that he and al-Rawi would be travelling to Gambia, and that they had a "electronic device" that could form part of an improvised explosive device, or as they're otherwise known, a bomb. What MI5 didn't tell the Americans was that this electronic device was, err, a battery charger from Argos. Still, that didn't bother the CIA too much. For them the pair's relationship with Abu Qatada was enough for them to be first flown to Bagram air base in Afghanistan, and then latterly to Guantanamo, where they "stayed" for four years.

Whether the MI6 hierarchy would regard that as another acceptable option should you apply remains to be seen.

Labels: , , , ,

Share |

8/20/2008 09:36:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, August 19, 2008 

Piffle.

Finally, a politician has the guts to challenge David Cameron over our "Broken Society":

If you believe the British press, the youth of today is aimless, feckless and hopeless, addicted to their PlayStations, lacking in respect and lacking in the emotional discipline needed to cope with a big match occasion.

If you believe the politicians, we have a broken society, in which the courage and morals of young people have been sapped by welfarism and political correctness.

And if you look at what is happening at the Beijing Olympics, you can see what piffle that is. Do not adjust your set: that really is a collection of smiling, well-balanced young British people, giving pleasingly self-deprecating accounts of how they have managed to haul in medal after medal after medal.


Which politically correct left-wing lunatic dares to be so optimistic in the face of such overwhelming evidence of how awful and atomised we are? Err, Boris Johnson. Doubtless he will be swiftly treated to a re-education session courtesy of CCHQ and Andy Coulson.

Labels: , ,

Share |

8/19/2008 09:34:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Maddie-balls: the public joins in.

I'm not sure whether to laugh hysterically at this story or do the diametric opposite:

When two British tourists spotted a woman leading a child with long blonde hair on the Croatian holiday island of Krk, they immediately thought it was Madeleine McCann.

The couple became even more convinced that the youngster was the missing Briton after secretly taking a couple of photographs.

So when the adult leading the child was not looking, the British woman grabbed the youngster's arm.

It was only then that she realised the child not only wasn't Madeleine, it wasn't even a little girl.

To make matters worse, the boy's father is a famous Croatian footballer and his mother - who was with him at the time - is a renowned glamour model.

...

Their son Leone has long blond hair like Madeleine's, but the similarity ends there - he is even six months younger than the missing three-year-old.


It really does have everything - gorgeous pouting glamour model, the irony of a couple attempting to snatch a child they believe is Our Maddie, and just to rub it in, it turns out the child isn't even female. I can't exactly comment on tastelessness involving the McCann case, but it's also incredibly questionable to have a photograph of Drpic posing alongside one of Madeleine in a similar position, almost comparing them in the style that the Mail has chosen.

The report does though illustrate in the starkest fashion the sort of hysteria which the McCann case has inspired, all of it only exacerbated by the splashing on front pages of children who look slightly similar to "Maddie" when seen from a distance. One moment the newspapers and the McCanns themselves are encouraging everyone to "keep looking for Maddie" and saying that "every sighting raises awareness", then when the inevitable happens and someone almost takes the law into their own hands, it's only thanks to an understanding and already famous couple used to attention that a situation didn't turn out to be as unpleasant as it could have been.

You have to leave it to a commenter to make a stupid situation look understandable by comparison:

A 2 year old boy mistaken for a 5 year old girl? How long before paedophiles everywhere are using the excuse of "we thought it was Madddie" when they attempt to snatch a child? How long before some idiot does grab a child from their parents and hurts them?

- Dee, East Midlands, 18/8/2008 14:51


Labels: , , , , ,

Share |

8/19/2008 09:06:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

What a difference a year makes...


TONIGHT is a moment of truth for Britain.

Out of nowhere, a Channel 4 show watched by a few million has erupted from being a bit of a laugh to a defining moment in the way Britain is seen by the rest of the world.

Make no mistake. Much more hangs on tonight’s Celebrity Big Brother eviction vote than the issue of whether Jade Goody or Shilpa Shetty stays in the house.

At stake is whether we are happy to be seen as a nation willing to tolerate vile bullying and foul-mouthed yobbishness.

That is why The Sun urges every reader who loves Britain to pick up a phone and make sure the ghastly Jade Goody is kicked out tonight.



SANITY has prevailed. Thank Heaven for that. Jade Goody went into the Big Brother house appearing to be simply a fun-loving working-class girl canny enough to have made millions from her 15 minutes of fame. It was all a meticulously manufactured lie. She has left the house with her true personality laid bare: A vile, pig-ignorant, racist bully consumed by envy of a woman of superior intelligence, beauty and class. Incredible as it may seem, last night’s vote was the most important in Britain since the last General Election.

...

Hopefully Jade will now slither back under the rock from where she crawled before her debut on Big Brother in 2002.

And so, 18 months later:




Get well Jade: Your messages

PLEASE post your messages of support and goodwill for BB legend Jade Goody


Whether once Jade has recovered from her cancer scare she'll be required to crawl back under her rock again, or once the silly season is over, whichever comes first, is entirely at the whim of Rebekah Wade.

Labels: , , ,

Share |

8/19/2008 08:47:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, August 18, 2008 

The book of Dave.

Being around 9 months behind everyone else as usual, I'm still reading the Alastair Campbell diaries, which I'll probably eventually post a review of. One of the things that hits you, apart from how unpleasant Campbell is towards anyone who steps so much as an inch out of line, Clare Short being a perennial target, is how much of his time is taken up by the most inane and vacuous garbage which made up both New Labour's modus operandi and much of the press coverage which accompanied it. It's all focus groups, policy discussions which resemble Blair's verb-less speeches, and Blair's constant panic attacks over delivering those self-same speeches. It's little wonder that Campbell is such a misanthropist; such bumpf would be enough to turn anyone stark raving mad.

As this blog has noted on a number of previous occasions, the Conservative party under Cameron wants to be the new Blairites. It's increasingly clear also that they're using Campbell's diaries as a sort of Bible as to how to present Cameron and their policies, or at least those ones which they've sketched out. Labour's response has been to paint Cameron as the ultimate vapid spokesperson, the shallow PR salesman. This attack doesn't work because we all know that's exactly how Blair presented himself; as the thoroughly straight kind of guy who wasn't Anthony but Tony. This got Blair an almost free ride until half-way through the second term, when it turned out that he did in fact have principles, but they weren't ones that the bulk of the Labour party shared. By then it was too late.

The vital difference with Cameron is that he's all the things that Blair was whilst at the same time being an undoubted dyed-in-the-wool Conservative, albeit a Modern One. To soften this slightly, the Conservatives have gone through the self same PR-tricks that New Labour did. Perhaps the ultimate summation of everything that Blair has bequeathed is that he vastly preferred the sofa on This Morning and later Richard to Judy to being interrogated by either Paxman or on the Today programme. That's understandable, but it made a mockery of serious politics. At the same time as Campbell was moaning endlessly about media triviality, his boss was preening himself in front of the execrable daytime TV couple.

Cameron and his media suits are slightly more canny than that. While there's no doubting he'll be occupying plenty of sofas in the times to come, in the here and now he's given a series of interviews to the editor of GQ magazine, Dylan Jones, published today as a book which Jones describes in the introduction as "the book of Dave". It's described, entirely accurately, as being a book about a politician for people who don't buy books about politicians. In about the only political entry in the entire thing, or at least in the excerpts the media have provided us with, Cameron informs us that he intends to be as radical a social reformer as Thatcher was an economic reformer. Even this is hardly an exclusive, as he's said it already on more than one occasion. Still, with the politics out of the way, Dave can get on to talking about himself some more and who he really is: he, like with Blair, wishes to be seen as classless, lest anyone have any illusions about the nature of his rather privileged upbringing; his favourite novel is Goodbye to All That; he prefers dogs to cats; his favourite soap is Neighbours, when Kylie Minogue was in it; and he prefers Little Britain to Alan Partridge, proving he really does have no taste whatsoever. There's only two questions that he doesn't seems to have been asked: boxers or briefs and pink or brown.

All this feels fairly sordid. I really don't care what soap the potential prime minister prefers, and rather resent the idea that I either need to know or want to know. I'm far more interested in why he thinks it's a good thing to act like someone with no knowledge of history whatsoever, or at least with no proper analysis of it, apropos his visit to Georgia and comments before it. Thing is, I have a horrible feeling that I'm in a minority here. This man of the people crap, as phoney and see-through as it is, seems to sell. After all, we put up with Blair for ten years, and even as he left the myth that he was the "great communicator" was still going round. As long as you're young, reasonably good-looking and can do a decent speech, even if it means precisely nothing, you can apparently get anywhere.

This is where Labour has gone wrong in attacking Cameron. However much shit you throw at him, for the moment nothing is sticking. Blair wasn't called Teflon Tony for nothing. It will probably take a couple of years, if not longer before people start to tire of his face and his complete analytical failure. Politics, ladies and gentlemen, however much we wish otherwise, is now all in the presentation, and Cameron and co are winning hands down.

Yvette Cooper, for her part, almost gets it. Unlike Miliband's shambles earlier in the month, she does hit a few of Cameron's weak spots, focusing as she does on the economy. As much as she quotes Clinton however, it's not just the slowdown, it's also the fact that it's Gordon Brown who's the leader of the country and that he's overwhelmingly responsible. We all know that Cameron's wheezes on tax are either focused directly at those who can afford it (inheritance tax) or those who don't need it (the long married middle classes who will overwhelming benefit from whatever amount the Tories decide marriage should be worth), while stamp duty is a side issue. She's right that the Conservative position on Northern Rock was a shambles, where they didn't have a clue what to do, leading to Vince Cable, who did know what he was talking about, being the first person the media went to for comment.

She, like all the others though, has almost completely ignored his "Broken Britain" gambit, which is just screaming out to be knocked into touch. There is no getting away from the fact that in the inner cities especially there are real intractable problems, whether involving worklessness, crime or family breakdown, but to apply this simplistic, solipsistic diagnosis to the entire country isn't just wrong, it ought to be seen as laughable, amateurish, and most of all, insulting. What's even more outrageous is that their solutions to this, whether they be the welfare reform they propose or the tax cuts mentioned above, are only likely to make things worse. The only real obstacle to an all-out assault on the Conservatives over this, and really, when better a time was there to do it than after the last set of crime figures, is that the tabloids themselves have been promoting the idea, especially the Sun. Again, if we're meant to be learning from New Labour's rise to power, their soundbite that was Britain deserved better, and that things could only get better. It was an attack on the Tories while at the same time being positive. It wasn't especially meaningful, but it was better than half of the other stuff they'd come up with. Broken Britain instead is wholly negative, giving an image of a nation which is in such a state that radical social reform on the scale of Thatcher's economic reforms, which ironically caused much of the social stagnation we now have, are the only solution. There's a huge open goal, and Labour are refusing to score. Vacuousness it seems, as always, is here to stay.

Labels: , , , , , ,

Share |

8/18/2008 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Collector's item.

A positive Daily Mail front page:

And there I was thinking the country was going to the dogs, overflowing with immigrants, criminals and paedophiles...

Labels: , ,

Share |

8/18/2008 11:57:00 PM | | | links to this post

Sunday, August 17, 2008 

Weekend links.

A bad weekend for the Sun newspaper, covered by both myself and Sim-O over on the Sun Lies blog. For those yet to visit, more or less all the contributors have now posted and I think many will be impressed by both the breadth of coverage to come and the talent of the editors which Tim has brought together. I know I was, and I was privy to the set-up. Eric the Fish also comments on Carlsberg pulling out of the Sun deal.

Elsewhere:

Lenin on the costs of NATO expansionism.

Jamie on Hizbullah and Russia-Georgia.

Lots of excellent comment on the above on OpenDemocracy Russia.

A Labour MP actually calling for the super rich to be taxed more? Get ready for the brick-bats, Ivan Lewis.

The truth emerges over the "battle of Jugroom Fort", which while not quite on the scale as the US lies about Pat Tillman, still suggests that we should always be cynical about stories of battlefield derring-do.

Juan Cole links to an Al-Jazeera report on the claims and counter-claims of atrocities in Georgia/South Ossetia.

The "decents", having been mostly quiet over Georgia-Russia up till now, break cover via Alan Johnson, who unsurprisingly blames Russia. Also worth noting has been the Henry Jackson Society's response.

Finally, Sarah Churchwell reviews Snuff by Palahniuk, and is far more damning than I was.

Labels: , , ,

Share |

8/17/2008 12:01:00 AM | | | links to this post

Friday, August 15, 2008 

The status quo ante.

Earlier in the week, the clear winner of the short but brutal and terrifying conflict in South Ossetia and Georgia, if indeed even now the war can be described as truly over, was undoubtedly Russia. However the war came about, and even if the actions of its military could be described as illegal, few could disagree that on both a moral and realist level that Russia had to respond to the assault on Tskhinvali, started cynically by Georgia just three hours after it had called for a ceasefire. Also forgiveable and understandable was the initial push on into Georgian territory, to ensure that the Georgian military had indeed pulled back and was no longer posing any sort of threat either to the South Ossetian citizens Russia regards as its own or to the Russian army itself. While shrill voices were already starting their chorus of accusations and counter-claims, Russia could for the most part stand with its head held relatively high.

7 days on from the beginning of the conflict, the picture has changed dramatically. Partly thanks to the undoubtedly superior Georgian propaganda and the response from Western democracies, most notably America, and partly due to the chaos, revenge attacks and collective punishment being wrought on Georgian territory, most of the goodwill which was generated has evaporated. More dangerously, the overwhelming message emanating from the media, including from the liberal press, if not from the majority of commenters yet, is that this marks a return to the old Cold War mentality. It goes without saying that Russian actions, arrogance and intransigence have encouraged this. There is no reason whatsoever for the Russian military to still be occupying any Georgian territory outside South Ossetia, and while some will be sympathetic to the apparent destruction of Georgian military hardware, ostensibly to prevent any repeat of last week's surprise attack but also doubtless to set back its development by years, neither is justified and also both are in breach of the ceasefire agreement now signed by both sides. Also chilling are the Russian remarks today threatening Poland over their decision to agree to host American missile silos, making clear in the cruellest language that such actions make it a potential target for a nuclear attack. While the missile shield is undoubtedly targeted at Russia rather than Iran, nothing whatsoever can justify such frightening allusions to devastation we thought had ebbed away.

The response from American politicians and commentators however has been little short of nauseating. For both George Bush and John McCain to stand up and say with straight faces that in the 21st century nations don't invade other nations is close enough in relation to Henry Kissinger winning the Nobel Peace Prize for some to declare modern day satire to be dead. Both surely mean that in the 21st century nations don't invade democracies, but neither seems to have the subtlety to dilute their remarks that far. Even those who initially supported the Iraq war have admitted that it has been a foreign policy disaster without parallel since Suez - and yet we and our "allies" seem to imagine we have both the right and the record to lecture Russia on a conflict which has so far probably claimed the lives of a hundredth of those who have been killed as a result of our actions in Iraq. To today see Condoleezza Rice standing on the same platform as Saakashvili, both pretending that Russia is the aggressor, with Saakashvili once again bringing out the most pitiful hyperbole that apparently only a Harvard education can imbue an individual with (correction: the Guardian's corrections and clarifications column points out that Saakashvili's LLM is from Columbia law school), Rice delivering deadpan that "this is no longer 1968", an ahistorical remark which makes a mockery of her personal specialism whilst an academic on the Soviet Union, is little more than a joke, albeit one which is lapped up by a media which seems unquestioning of the idea that the Russian menace is firmly back.

For those looking for the democracy to support, or sympathise with, neither Russia nor Georgia adequately fits the bill. While it is inaccurate to refer to Russia as a dictatorship, as some have over the last few days, there is no doubt that after the liberalisation under Yeltsin the country has been turned by Putin into a autocratic state where very little dissent is tolerated. The media is almost entirely state controlled, the elections are rigged, although it also seems quite possible that even if they weren't, Medvedev or United Russia, Putin's party, would still be in power, and as we know only too well, the state itself appears to be involved in sanctioned assassinations of those who know too much or who refuse to remain quiet. Equally disingenuous though is the presentation of Georgia as a happily functioning Western-style democracy. The suspending of Imedi TV's licence (interestingly owned at one point by News Corporation), the brutal suppression of opposition demonstrations, and the report of fraud during last November's elections give the lie to the model democracy statements. If you wanted to get into a battle over whom smells the least, it would be Georgia, but that is surely counter-acted by the initials actions of the country in provoking the Russian military response.

If the Western world was slow to respond, surprised and distracted by the initial confusion and the Olympics, then that has quickly been forgotten. The most fair-handed have been without doubt both the French and the Germans; Nicolas Sarkozy, desperate to impress perhaps because of his domestic unpopularity and the French presidency of the EU quickly engaging in the diplomacy which brought about the agreement that has now been signed by both sides. Angela Merkel, with her comments that some of the Russian response has been disproportionate is also difficult to disagree with. Then again, that too is doubtless influenced by the German dependence on Russian oil and gas. The boorishness of the comments from the Americans about "bullying and intimidation", neither of which they have ever engaged in, and especially not during the futile search for a second UN resolution on Iraq, is again something to behold.

As for the long-term consequences, these too appear to have changed as the week has gone by. Georgia has probably lost South Ossetia and Abkhazia for good, however much it protests. Their loss will certainly not however alter Georgia's ability to function, and one has to wonder whether they could have stayed Georgian in the long term, war or no war. Additionally, at one point it looked as though the Russian victory had been so crushing that Saakashvili could be in immediate trouble. That has now dissipated, perhaps with the continuing Russian occupation further uniting the Georgian people around a leader they might otherwise have dismissed at the first opportunity for his recklessness. If this was meant to be Russia flexing its muscles and emerging from its weakness post the collapse of the Soviet Union, that too now looks doubtful. Instead the encirclement not just continues, but at an apparently renewed pace. I fear also that Paul Krugman is wrong in his belief that this marks the end of Pax Americana - while America was never going to rush its military forces to the defence of Georgia, especially when she acted so suicidally, the idea that this means an end to of the monopoly of military force on their behalf is naive. What we have instead witnessed is that no one else can dare to act like either America or Israel has and expect to get away with it as they have. While the attack on Iran that once looked ominously close has faded into the distance somewhat, it can be guaranteed that if it does come that those same people who have so exculpated Russia this week will be in the forefront in defending, justifying and apologising for it.

In short, nothing has changed. It's maybe that, rather than Russia itself that we should be most concerned about.

Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,

Share |

8/15/2008 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Scum-watch: Heel, Gordon!

Where then has Gordon Brown been during the past week's upheaval in Eurasia?

Oh, here he is:

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has joined the US in calling for Russia to immediately withdraw from Georgia.

Mr Brown spoke in a phone call to Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili, after his meeting in Tbilisi with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Russia's incursion was a "completely unjustified violation of Georgia's territorial integrity", the prime minister's spokesman said.

In addition, Britain is to give £2m to the Red Cross appeal for Georgia.


Undoubtedly completely unconnected, here's tomorrow's Sun editorial:

WHEN David Cameron arrives in Georgia today he will be the first major British politician to visit the small, democratic country being systematically trashed by the mighty Russian bear.

Some will accuse him of being an opportunist. After all, what can he do to help solve the conflict? How many battalions does he command?

But at least the Tory leader is taking a strong stand against increasing Russian belligerence.

And this was made all the more urgent by last night’s chilling warning from a senior Russian general that Poland — a member of Nato — has become a nuclear target since daring to allow America to build an anti-missile system on its land.

This escalation in tension only makes the question more urgent: Where on earth are Gordon Brown and his Foreign Secretary David Miliband?

It was only AFTER the Tory leader had been on the airwaves on Monday that Mr Brown issued a brief statement.

And again on Tuesday the Prime Minister recorded a brief TV clip AFTER David Cameron had already spoken out at a televised press conference. That was almost FIVE DAYS after the conflict had begun.

The Government has been made to look weak. Not because of anything David Cameron has done, but because of what Downing Street HASN’T done.

Deal

It is reasonable to ask where our Prime Minister is . . .

As French President Nicolas Sarkozy flits between Moscow and the Georgian capital Tbilisi, hammering out a peace deal.

As German Chancellor Angela Merkel visits the two warring countries.

As American Secretary of State Condaleezza Rice races between European capitals and the region trying to rein in the out-of-control Russians.

As President Bush orders humanitarian supplies into beleaguered Georgia and makes daily statements from the White House Rose Garden.

We cannot imagine Tony Blair taking such a low key role if the old Cold War had threatened to rise from the grave during his watch.

He would have been the FIRST to rally our allies, the FIRST to order in aid, the FIRST to speak out against Russian aggression.

Gordon Brown has a reputation for dithering. He has added to it this week. And by doing so he has made David Cameron look like a credible leader.

It is time Mr Brown shook his reputed “clunking fist” in Russia’s face as it threatens the world’s peaceful and prosperous future.

Complete crap, naturally, but it's interesting because this is the first time the Sun has been heavily critical of Gordon Brown that I can remember; earlier in the week it was in fact defending him, saying he was doing everything he could on the domestic front. That the first time the Sun has blasted him has been on something that he truly can do nothing whatsoever about or indeed should do anything about shows what it is that Rupert Murdoch's most concerned about at the moment, and it sure isn't this country.

Labels: , , ,

Share |

8/15/2008 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, August 14, 2008 

No sense of shame.


I predicted yesterday that the same newspapers that stalked and smeared Colin Stagg for 14 years would not be at all happy with his £706,000 compensation award. Even I though didn't expect that both the Scum and the Mail would splash on it, each doing their very best to whip up faux-outrage in the way they have become so accustomed to doing. Not only did we get the £98,000 that was awarded to Nickell's son rolled out for comparison, but anyone and everyone who's received less of late has been brought up, or their families contacted for comment. Hence we have the Scum contacting the family of a woman murdered in the 7/7 attacks, who received only £11,000 in compensation, who declare that this makes the system a joke. The Sun being the Sun, "Our Boys" have to be brought into the equation, with the injured in action often receiving less than the maximum £285,000, although they also get a £20,000 annual pension. According to Phil Cooper, whose son received £57,000 after he lost the use of a leg and received severe injuries to his stomach, it's "a kick in the teeth." Danny Biddle, another 7/7 victim who lost both his legs, an eye and his spleen calls the system "disgraceful". The Mail even got the Tory MP Patrick Mercer to open his trap, commenting on both the "total imbalance" between the payout to Stagg and to Nickell's son, and then also onto our servicemen who are receiving nowhere near the same amount.

There is one comparison which neither of the tabloids make that other bloggers have however. Ben Collett, a promising Manchester United player, only a few days ago received a payout totalling £4.5 million in lost earnings after a high tackle broke his leg in two places and brought an end to his career. The one abiding message coming out of all of this is that the various compensation systems aren't fair or equal - hardly a newsflash. None of this is Stagg's fault. Indeed, that is the very reason why Stagg's payout deserved to be so high, if not higher. While everyone can sympathise with the victims of 7/7 who similarly were in the wrong place at the wrong time, it's a little different to the case of soldiers, who know full well the risks when they join up. This by no means justifies either their lower payouts or their relatively low wages, but it's not comparing like with like. Stagg was picked out for his treatment by both the police and the media for no other reason than he was supposedly weird: meaning he was a loner, had a couple of books on the occult, some paper knives and an unusual decoration scheme. This was enough for the police to decide that he was a murderer. It was enough for the media to believe, or convince themselves enough to believe, that he was the murderer.

What directly lies behind today's phony apoplexy is that the newspapers themselves know that they're just as responsible for the payout as the Metropolitan police are. It's impossible to think that Lord Brennan wasn't in part influenced when deciding the amount by the media's continued obsession with either directly or indirectly accusing Stagg of being involved in Nickell's death. Their cover is to pretend that they themselves are wholly innocent of any wrong-doing, and so again claim to be on the people's side and for those others that have been compensated less well. Even now the Mail is continuing in just the same way as it has for the last 14 years: wilfully misquoting Stagg in the headline of its current article to give the impression that he is unfeeling towards fellow miscarriage of justice victim Barry George, when in he fact says he feels sorry for the time he spent in prison but less sympathy because of his past conviction for attempted rape and tendency to follow women. As Dave Osler also notes, it also gives the most perfunctory of explanations to what happened to Stagg: he was simply cleared of Nickell's murders, not wrongly accused or fitted up by the police, perish the thought.

The Sun kindly however provides a reminder of how it and the other tabloids covered Stagg's acquittal, putting up a scan of their front page the day after. NO GIRL IS SAFE, it shrieks, alongside a photograph of Stagg, with Rachel murderer will strike again underneath. The inference is all too clear: this man has got away with it, and he will kill again.

Perhaps realising that they can't go too over the top, the Scum's leader admits, probably for the first time in such language, how Stagg's life was ruined:

THERE is no doubt Colin Stagg’s life was ruined by Scotland Yard’s cynical fit-up.

He spent a year in jail on remand before the charges over Rachel Nickell’s murder were dropped.

He has since spent 15 years as a social pariah, unemployable, and with the stink of suspicion hanging over him despite his total innocence.


Could the stink of suspicion hanging over him in any way be attributable to the Sun? Obviously not, as even now neither it nor any of the other tabloids have offered apologies to Stagg for their low-level campaigns against him. Here comes the but that you were waiting for:

Even so, £706,000 is an enormous compensation payout.

Especially compared with the £90,000 given to Rachel’s son Alex, who saw his mum murdered and will spend a lifetime without her.

Or compared with the payouts to victims of terrorist atrocities.


How much does the Sun think an adequate award for spending 15 years as a social pariah is then? Considering the tidy sums which newspaper editors and their proprietors are paid and pay themselves, isn't £706,000 an about right sum for their own role in his misery?

Many will be asking today whether the enormous sums given out in miscarriage-of-justice cases should dwarf so spectacularly those for people left enduring a lifetime of physical and mental agony.

Does the Sun think that spending inordinate lengths of time in prison for a crime that they didn't commit doesn't often leave miscarriage of justice victims with a lifetime of mental, and in some cases physical agony, considering the treatment they receive inside? One judge notably described the process some have been subject to as "like a prolonged kidnapping". If anything, the majority of payments to the victims of miscarriages of justice are derisory and add to insult to injury when "room and board" payments are deducted from them, like in the case of the Hickeys.

The system is patently unfair.

As indeed is life, and the press in this country. The one bright spot is that so many in the comments on both the Mail and the Sun sites have defended the payout, often saying it isn't enough. The only thing that hasn't been stressed enough is the media's own role. To that, we should leave the last words to Emine Saner:

The compensation is only a part of making amends. Stagg deserves some very public apologies: from the police and others who were convinced Stagg was guilty. From defaming authors who have made money from him and from every person who has ever spat at him in the street or hurled abuse. And definitely from certain newspapers (it would be tempting to think the press had learned its lesson but the recent experience of Robert Murat shows that nothing has changed). Then, perhaps, at last Colin Stagg really can get on with his life.

Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Share |

8/14/2008 08:29:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, August 13, 2008 

The Stagg hunt draws to a close.

It's difficult to think of someone more of a victim of the gutter press in this country than Colin Stagg. One other name does come to mind, but she used them as much as they used her. Here's a prediction: tomorrow the very same newspapers that stalked and hunted him for over a decade will be at the least less than happy with the £706,000 that Stagg through his solicitors has revealed he will receive in compensation for his treatment courtesy of the Metropolitan police. They will raise the amount which Rachel Nickell's son received, a derisory sum which could never even begin to account for how he was found, gripping his mother, covered in blood and begging her to get up. They will point out for a very long time indeed he was the only suspect; because the police themselves wanted him to remain the only suspect. Keith Pedder for one, the detective inspector in charge on the case, has written two self-affirming and congratulatory books on how Stagg had managed to get away with murder. It was only after a further investigation by a separate cold case team that another man, Robert Napper, a paranoid schizophrenic being held at Broadmoor indefinitely for two murders with similarities to the killing of Nickell that the police finally admitted to themselves that their hunt for Stagg had been futile.

Not that they have admitted publicly to that, or said the simplest words to Stagg personally that they got it wrong. Then again, why should they? After all, those other companions in the decade long stalking, baiting and smearing of Stagg, this country's finest tabloid newspapers, have never admitted they were wrong or said sorry either. Although almost of them were involved in pursuing him and ran articles calling either for the abolition of the laws on double jeopardy (which New Labour happily obliged in removing) or that implicated him in the murder if not directly accusing him, undoubtedly the most bile was delivered in the limp Sunday rag The People, which republished the letters which "Lizzie James", the Met's honeytrap exchanged with Stagg during the attempt to link him to the kind of bizarre sexual practices which the psychologist Paul Britton was convinced the perpetrator had. The Mail meanwhile, in the best practices which the newspaper retains for those that are accused of crimes, performed hatchet job after hatchet job, serialising Pedder's impotent book, and also ran an interview with Nickell's former boyfriend, who made a personal appeal for the double jeopardy law to be repealed. Their attitude towards Stagg could not be more summed up than by the words of John Junor, whom in an article purporting to ask the question whether Stagg would always be targeted as the killer who got away, wrote:

It would be terrible, however, to think that he is going to be hounded for the rest of his life for having been found not guilty of murder when it is certainly not beyond the bounds of possibility that he was indeed innocent.

How magnanimous and kind of both Junor and the Mail to admit that it was possible that Stagg was indeed innocent, despite his acquittal. The irony and amazing chutzpah of the Mail asking whether Stagg would remain to be stalked when it was the one leading the stalking, while also attempting to soften its line but failing miserably is something to behold.

Nick Cohen, writing in the Observer a couple of years back, linked the credulity and continuing belief that Stagg was guilty among the tabloid hacks to the influence of the police on them, to the closeness which gives them their stories, their exclusives, and the photographs of the suspects themselves either being brought in or when arrested. This is undoubtedly part of the reason, but I am far more cynical than Cohen. These reporters knew full well that Stagg was innocent, as did their editors. The best that can be said is that they convinced themselves in order to appraise their consciences of any guilt. This had to be done because there was no evidence whatsoever linking Stagg to Nickell except the Met's attempts to entrapment, which he even then rebuffed. No, these stories were not out of any public interest to ensure that the killer was brought to justice, they were because they knew they were what the public wants to read, that they want someone to blame when such horrible crimes are committed, even if the case is apparently unsolvable, and that most of all, they sold. Nickell's former boyfriend, already mentioned, noted this. His bitterness at being chased out of the country, forced to live in France to escape was more than palpable in his description of the hacks:

"Callous, mercenary and unfeeling scum ... you've got people on your doorstep every day, people following you around in cars taking pictures of you, people peeping over fences and Rachel's face appearing in the paper every day with any tenuous link ... it's one of those stories that's become part of British culture."

Quite so. Much is the same with any attractive woman or child that is tragically killed, murdered or abducted. Whether it be Nickell, Princess Diana, Sally Anne Bowman or Madeleine McCann, they stare out from the front pages, forever locked in their youthful beauty, demanding that something be done about their disappearance or deaths. They pretend that it's because they care, when in reality it's because of their own business models, the phoniness of providing a service while sucking the individual they've latched onto dry until they too can be dispensed with, when the trail finally dries up and everyone, except those being exploited, have moved on.

The police's insistence in having found the right person is the justification, not the reason why. We saw it again just a couple of weeks back with Barry George, where again hardly any journalists or anyone outside of the police really believed he was anywhere near capable of killing Jill Dando, let alone in the way in which she was assassinated. Yet they printed the police's self-serving, laughably weak attempts to still pretend that George was the murderer, even while they must surely have known it was not true. In Nickell's case, at least the police have now found a man who might well be her real murderer, while with Dando it seems incredibly unlikely that her killer will ever be brought to justice. The victims in both cases have been treated abominably, whether they be the relatives or those fitted up. And yet our supposed justice seeking media, which never lets up on the law and order agenda, defends and carries the squeals of innocence spoon-fed to them by their sources.

Stagg's award, despite its size, will never get him his life back. It seems doubtful, even now, that he'll find work, after being made unemployable because of his notoriety. There is however most certainly a case for the £706,000 not completely being stumped up by the taxpayer. No, the real damage was done not by the trial and the fit-up, but by the compliant media which demonised and destroyed day by day, week by week, month by month and year by year. It should be Associated Newspapers, the Mirror Group and News International that should be writing the cheques and stumping up at least half if not more of the money. The suffering they have caused and continue to cause to countless people through their complete lack of integrity and not knowing when enough is enough is such that it's time they were hit in the only place where it hurts: the pocket. Their power however protects them, and there is absolutely nothing it seems that we can do about it.

Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Share |

8/13/2008 10:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Improve your English with the super soaraway Sun!

Kudos must go to the schools minister Jim Knight for some top class satire at the Sun's expense:

TENS of thousands of teenage boys are falling behind in English skills – and should read The Sun to improve, a minister said yesterday.

He then ruins the joke by taking it too far:

He also urged parents to encourage boys to read books by Sun columnists Jeremy Clarkson, who stars on telly’s Top Gear, and ex-SAS soldier Andy McNab.

And if you really want to put them off reading for life, you could suggest Ayn Rand to complete the trifecta.

To be serious for a half a moment, if Knight wasn't trying to be the biggest sycophant to walk on a pair of legs, he could have suggested that there are plenty of things apart from one of the world's worst newspapers and two of its worst columnists to read that may actually help them improve their reading and which won't embarrass them - video game magazines, for example, are on the whole far better written and less poisonous than the Sun or any of the other tabloids. Most schools with a half decent library will have plenty that is designed to appeal to those at that exact age, and also probably, if they're lucky, a couple of broads or ex-broads or at least their sports sections which genuinely would help rather than talk down to the average teenage boy.

Still, it's nice to see that the Sun accepts that its reading level is about that of a 14-year-old - maybe Knight wasn't paying a compliment after all. It also let this comment through:

Well, they'll learn plenty of slang, jive talk and poor English if nothing else by reading the sun.

Labels: , , , ,

Share |

8/13/2008 09:03:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, August 12, 2008 

Yet more never ending Maddie-balls.

Could you possibly fucking merit it?
KATE and Gerry McCann have been dealt a fresh blow in their search for daughter Maddie.

The girl resembling Maddie shown in CCTV footage yesterday is not believed to be her.

A Belgian man has claimed that the girl in the footage was his daughter.

 The woman pictured is believed to be the girl's nanny.

It's interesting to note that it's Kate and Gerry McCann that have been dealt a fresh blow, and not the Sun newspaper, which screamed yesterday on its front page "IS IT HER?" The answer to which is of course, no, and that no one with more than five braincells believed for a second it was. Let's face facts here: if Madeleine has been abducted, it's not very likely that she's going to be dragged through town by the abductor in broad daylight in front of all and sundry, especially not if the abductor(s) was/were part of a paedophile ring, as the tabloids were speculating breathlessly about last week.

Kate and Gerry McCann, from Rothley, Leics, thanked The Sun for its investigation.

Spokesman Clarence Mitchell added: “Kate and Gerry would also like to thank this girl’s parents for going to police.

“It is disappointing news but they have been in this position before and the hunt for Madeleine will continue. Every sighting raises awareness which is a good thing. When it is in people’s minds they are looking out for her which is what we need.”


Thanked them for what exactly? For enriching themselves further through publishing spurious sightings which even the McCanns must know have about 1% chance of actually being their daughter? For filling up the newspaper during the silly season, which the McCanns must also know is a really onerous task? For raising their hopes even slightly just to dash them again? The idea that somehow every sighting raises awareness is also counter-productive and counter-intutive. Sure, it raises awareness: it encourages every cross-eyed nitwit to imagine that the little blonde girl they've just seen is definitely Madeleine McCann, especially if she's just apparently been sighted in the local area. Last week it was rumoured that she might have been snatched by a Belgian paedophile ring, and what do you know, suddenly dozens of people in Belgium have seen plucky little Madeleine McCann, apparently not being sodomised every hour of the waking day by swarthy foreigners but instead walking about the streets looking "sad", even while being given her "favourite" chocolate ice cream.

Today's award for the best Maddie-balls though has to go to the Sun's deputy editor Fergus Shanahan, via Anorak:

“I tried to imagine the misery Kate and Gerry McCann must be going through with these Maddie sightings. It’s too awful.”

Considering you're the deputy editor, how about you stop splashing them on the front fucking page and save us all the collective misery?

“They must cling to any hope. But some of the latest rash of ‘sightings’ are based on thin detail.”

“Sadly, the Maddie tragedy is attracting its fair-share of attention seekers”

They're known collectively I believe as "journalists".

“It seems unlikely that Europe’s most instantly recognisable child would be walked through city streets by her abductors.”

In other words, it is all about the profit. Praise the money!

After this turgid crap comes a bolt from the blue:

“But if convincing reports of sightings continue, Scotland Yard should set up a Maddie squad capable of moving instantly anywhere in Europe.”

Ah yes, at the drop of a hat Scotland Yard should be ready to get in the Maddie copter to fly to where the latest attention seeker has seen Europe's most instantly recognisable child. Will Rupert Murdoch be good enough to put up the cash needed to get this venture off the ground, and save taxpayers from being at the whim of the morons in charge of our daily papers?

Update: Ben in the comments suggests the above might have been a parody, considering Shanahan was delivering his usual crap here. If anyone can confirm if the above was in the Sun today/yesterday, drop a comment in.

Away from Madeleine McCann, the Sun was beating its war chest over Brutal Putin, for which see my post on The Sun - Tabloid Lies blog.

Related:
Enemies of Reason - Madeleine hopes/fears

Labels: , , , , , ,

Share |

8/12/2008 11:24:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, August 11, 2008 

Another war in the silly season.

As always with the fog of war, it's next to impossible to know accurately at any stage what genuinely is happening in Georgia/South Ossetia/Abkhazia unless you're on the ground. To a degree, however, we're now fairly certain of what started it. Although there have been months of provocation on both sides, while Putin was away in Beijing attending the Olympics, the Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili seemingly gave the order for a large assault, if not for the whole of South Ossetia then most certainly for its capital, Tskhinvali. Survivors of the attack, streaming to the Russian border for safety, describe carnage and snipers shooting at them as they fled. The Russians have claimed that up to 2,000 people were killed, although they've also hyperbolically described it as a genocide. How much of Tskhinvali has been destroyed or damaged is unclear, as the Russians have yet to let any journalists into the capital.

If Saakashvili was hoping that the assault would go unnoticed, overshadowed by the opening ceremony, or alternatively with Putin away that the Russians would be slow to respond, neither occurred. Within hours the Russian counter-assault was launched, with such apparent planning that they have since been accused of planning the wholesale invasion and subjugation of Georgia. Yesterday the Georgians pulled back from South Ossetia entirely, and according to Saakashvili are now under a unilateral ceasefire. Not clear at the moment is just where the Russians are, what their intentions are, and whether returning to the status quo is possible, let alone desirable. Reports throughout the day have claimed that the Russians have cleaved the country in two, have taken Gori, 47 miles from Tbilisi and a town subjected to bombing raids, and have also taken Senaki, 25 miles from the Abkhazia boundary. All have been denied and counter-claimed or clarified, with no real confirmation to make the reality clearer.

Atrocities have undoubtedly been committed by both sides. Craig Murray calls Georgia's actions lawful, but by the survivor accounts we have heard they were certainly being completely indiscriminate in both shelling and sniping. Russia's response has also clearly gone beyond the realms of defending citizens that both they and it regard as subjectively their own; the raids on Gori, attacks on Tbilisi airport and the targeting of economic as well as military installations further confirms this. As Craig also states, what is desperately needed is an immediate ceasefire from both sides so that the dust can settle, for the true picture of what has happened to emerge, and so that those now travelling to the region to engage in urgent diplomacy do not have their trips completely wasted.

You can however hardly blame Russia's initial response to what was a naive, foolhardy and apparently murderous gambit by Saakashvili. As korova notes, back at the end of last year Saakashvili's approval ratings were hovering around the 16% mark. For all the talk of Georgia and its wonderful emerging liberal democracy, Saakashvili has presided over, like in Russia itself and China, a virulent rising of nationalism, promising in effect that both South Ossetia and Abkhazia would remain a part of Georgia, and even potentially be re-taken. If last Thursday/Friday's events were him putting his plans into effect, then it has backfired in a way that he must have surely at least contemplated it might. For all the overwhelming support that Saakashvili is now receiving from the West, they must privately be fuming that such an apparently suicidal mission was even contemplated, let alone attempted, although it would be hugely surprising if America or intelligence agencies didn't have even an inkling of what was shortly going to happen. It will almost certainly kill Georgia's chances of joining NATO for years, if not decades, and the West's desire to encircle Russia through the alliance, for that is undoubtedly what it is, cannot yet be realised.

There is of course a hypocrisy an inch thick running through the entire debacle. It's impossible not to be reminded of events two years previous when Hizbullah's attack and kidnapping of Israeli troops sparked the near month long war which resulted in the deaths of around 1,200 Lebanese civilians and nearly 200 Israelis. Then the boot was on the other foot: Israel's missile attacks on Beirut airport, on power stations and on the residential sections of Beirut where Hizbullah had its base were by no means disproportionate, words that no one in government in this country or in the Bush administration uttered, even when Qana was hit for a second time. Bush has just described Russia's actions as "unacceptable in the 21st century", even though Israel too invaded and attacked a sovereign, democratic state in just as vicious a fashion. Our own actions in Iraq leave us with next to no legs to stand on when lecturing other nations for invading sovereign states, yet we continue to act as though we are paragons of the international scene. We refer to Russia as though nothing has changed since the days of the cold war, as though we are the perennial abused and victimised, and yet still America insists on installing missile interception systems in Poland and the Czech Republic which it pretends are aimed at Iran but which are quite transparently really meant to protect against attack from Moscow, encircling it slowly but surely. We then wonder why the Russian bear, to go with the cliché, then dares to on occasion show its fangs.

There are, to repeat, no good guys here. Russia, as if it needed to be mentioned, is hardly acquiescent when it comes to regions which want to break away from it, such as Chechnya, subjected to horrific conflict throughout the 90s and into the 00s, with the destruction which Grozny suffered an reminder of what Georgia might yet be in store for. Georgia however, and its desire to be seen as the victim, are equally as false and facile. What must urgently be rejected is the tendency to see this either as a resurrection of the cold war or as a great opportunity for the old Russiaphobia to once again take hold, something which CiF seems to be trying to achieve. All of the historical precedents which have been sited, whether they be 1938, 1956 or 1968, are not yet applicable, nor does it seem they will become so. It also undoubtedly punctures another hole in the fatuous idea of Thomas Friedman's that countries that have McDonald's don't go to war with each other. The key now is ensuring that this war is ended before any McDonald's themselves are destroyed.

Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Share |

8/11/2008 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Neverending Maddie-balls.

*No, of course it fucking isn't. Not even we're that stupid. The only reason we're printing this is that an otherwise completely ordinary little blonde girl, of which we all know there are only a handful out of 6 billion inhabitants of this planet, just happens to be walking along with a woman wearing a hijab, or a headscarf, meaning she must be a Muslim, meaning she can't possibly be white, meaning there just shouldn't be a little white blonde girl with her. It's the same reason why we printed those photographs of a little blonde girl in Morocco, because there just simply shouldn't be white blonde girls in Morocco, even though she didn't look anything like Madeleine when seen close up. We just never fucking learn, do we? Why are people still buying this crap? How did I end up working on the Scum when I wanted to follow in the footsteps of Bernstein and Woodward? Why don't I just shoot myself in the fucking head?

Away from the thoughts of the average Sun journalist, reaction to my rather poor satire on how tabloid coverage of Madeleine might look in 16 years' time has been predictably polarised:

You wrote the article because you fantasise about having sex with children, you need help quickly and lets hope it's not too late before you hurt some innocent little child

Labels: , , , , ,

Share |

8/11/2008 10:45:00 PM | | | links to this post

Saturday, August 09, 2008 

Quote of the year and weekend links.

Tonight a senior US official described the Russian response in Georgia as "disproportionate".

Lenin - The "new cold war" escalates.

Blood and Treasure - le debacle.

Global Voices - Georgia: the Blame Game.

The Global Buzz has mucho coverage of the South Ossetia crisis.

Nosemonkey has two excellent round-ups.

Unzipped - Georgia - Russia: War is On.

Fistful of Euros - South Ossetia: alea jacta est

Mark Almond - Plucky little Georgia?

and Aaron Heath does the round-up over on Liberal Conspiracy.

Labels: , , , ,

Share |

8/09/2008 09:40:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, August 08, 2008 

Aren't we just great?

You have to laugh, somewhat sadly at the Press Complaints Commission bigging itself up because the Evening Standard apologised within 36 hours of its completely inaccurate front page story claiming that the Duke of Edinburgh had prostate cancer:

This complaint reveals the clear advantages of coming to the PCC with complaints of privacy intrusion. The process has been quick: the final settlement was negotiated less than 36 hours after the original complaint was made. In contrast with some legal actions, it has involved no further private details – which in this case would have related to Prince Philip’s health – being released into the public domain. The apology has been prominent and proportionate. And the PCC costs nothing to use. The article under complaint has been removed from the newspaper’s website and replaced with the text of the apology, which appears on the homepage and then will be archived permanently.

On the contrary, it reveals the clear advantages of going to the PCC if you happen to be a member of the royal family and if the story is demonstratively untrue. Prince Philip was hardly likely to sue, doubtless his doctors could quickly be prevailed upon to show that the story was false, and the paper therefore had no option but to apologise profusely and quickly. It's more down to the fuss that Buckingham Palace made as soon as the paper was published and the resultant publicity than anything to do with the wonderful nature of the PCC.

If, on the other hand, the story had been about someone with no money or without fame, where the person could not instantly prove that report was completely inaccurate and where there was no publicity whatsoever, the PCC would have probably done nothing whatsoever about it, or months would have passed before even the slightest error was admitted on the newspaper's part. It's such a shame we can't all be members of the royal family, isn't it?

Related:
Enemies of Reason - Oops we did it again

Labels: , , , , , ,

Share |

8/08/2008 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

16 years from now... (warning: in very, very bad taste)

I HAD SEX WITH MADELEINE MCCANN, SAYS HOLIDAYMAKER

By Lori Campbell

The Daily Zoo can exclusively reveal the latest sighting of Madeleine McCann, the missing 4-year-old British girl who vanished 6,667 days ago. Rodney Shabby, an 19-year-old holidaymaker from Cleethorpes claims to have had sex with her while visiting Praia da Luz in Portugal.

"I met her in a bar near to the hotel where the McCanns originally stayed. I never asked what her name was, but she had long blonde hair, a necklace with "Maddie" on it, and she definitely had that funny thing in her eye, although that might just have been a monocle. I was pretty pissed though, and she left after I threw up all over her tits."

The Daily Zoo, in a magnanimous gesture in no way associated with wanting to sell more daily news discs and make money out of the McCanns' unending misery, paid for Mr Shabby to travel to meet the McCanns and provide a photo fit of the woman he claims to have had sex with.

Clarence Mitchell, the McCann's spokesman, talking to us from Broadmoor, was enthusiastic about the Daily Zoo's discovery. "It certainly raises possibilities. Madeleine, if still alive, would be 21 now and doubtless engaging in a typically vigorous casual sex life. This is just another example of how the Portuguese police have failed us for the last 16 years."

Shabby himself is glowing in his new found fame. "It's not every day you can say that you've boned a missing 4-year-old girl, is it?" Asked whether the pre-schooler was good in bed, Shabby was effusive. "I would say so. I mean, I don't even know how I got it up, but she didn't complain or anything, not until I covered her chest in Sambuca, half-digested chips and orange bits, anyway."

"I just hope my sighting brings some kind of relief to the McCanns. What could be better than to know that your daughter's still alive, that she's still hot, and that she's spending her time doing what every young British person on holiday does best?"

The Daily Zoo, using Shabby's photo fit, has re-imagined what a naked 21-year-old Madeleine McCann with vomit all over her funbags might look like. Press select on your remote now to see the 3d representation.

(Loosely based on today's asinine silly season exploitation of both the McCanns and Anna Stam in the Mirror.)

Labels: , , , , , , ,

Share |

8/08/2008 11:58:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, August 07, 2008 

Scum-watch: Europe and Hamza, sitting in a tree..

There's nothing the Sun loves better (other than big tits, Our Boys, attractive missing little girls and Sky, naturally) than attacking Europe, both as a whole and as in the political union. Add in one of the Sun's other favourite pantomime villains, the almost too good to be true Abu Hamza, and you have the latest outrage about which something must be done:

Euro clowns let Hamza off the hook

EUROPEAN judges yesterday halted Abu Hamza’s extradition to the US on terror charges after the cleric claimed it would breach his human rights.

If this is meant to give the impression that the European judges have ruled that he can't be extradited, then the Sun's job has been done. It's only four paragraphs later that the Sun explains further:

They ruled the extradition be put on hold until they are able to consider the case.

In other words, all the court has decided is that there's potentially a case to answer and that Hamza should not be deported until the court considers its decision. The European Court of Human Rights is the last court which Hamza has recourse to appeal to, having decided not to apply to the House of Lords after the High Court ruled his extradition should go ahead.

Quite why the Sun is getting so excited about this is a mystery. Hamza isn't going anywhere, as he's still serving his sentence for stirring up racial hatred and inciting murder at Belmarsh, and is unlikely to be released even if he completes it before the ECHR makes its ruling. It feebly attempts to suggest that this will be another £50,000 of "benefits" going to Hamza, but this is legal aid which he'll never so much as touch. The chances of him succeeding are also negligible: he doesn't face the death penalty, so the precedent set by Soering v. the United Kingdom doesn't apply, and he hasn't in his appeal to the ECHR claimed that the evidence against him is the product of torture, as he had previously done.. Just as pathetic is its final remarks that the judges are from countries unlikely to be "targets in the war on terror":

They are Giovanni Bonnell, 72, from Malta, David Björgvinsson, 52, of Iceland, Paivi Hirvelä, 53, of Finland, Nebojsa Vucinic, 55, of Montenegro, Mihai Poalelungi, 45, of Moldavia (sic), Jan Šikuta, 47, of Slovakia, Ljiljana Mijovic, 44, of Bosnia Herzegovina, Ledi Bianku, 37, of Albania and Lech Garlicki, 61, of Poland.

This is ignorant in two ways. Firstly because these are the judges of just one of the sections, section IV, which just happened to be the ones chosen in this case to rule on Hamza's request. The president of the court, for instance, is French, a nation which has dealt with Islamic terrorism for far longer than we have, while one of the vice-presidents is a Brit. Additionally, one of the section presidents is Danish, another country which has found itself in the eye of the storm recently. Additionally, while the majority of those countries may not have suffered or been targeted in the "war on terror" (yet), Bosnia was certainly one of the places of interest to al-Qaida in the 90s, and Poland has deployed troops in Iraq, most certainly making them a potential target.

It's the Scum's leader that as usual lets loose with the both barrels:

YOU won’t have ever heard of 72-year-old Giovanni Bonnell from Malta. Or Ledi Bianku, 37, from Albania.

But yesterday these two — plus seven other judges on the European Court of Human Rights — STOPPED the extradition of hate preacher Abu Hamza to the US.

They haven't stopped it - they've ruled that it should it be postponed while they consider the matter. There's quite a big difference between saying they can't extradite Hamza and saying that they shouldn't whilst they consider the case.

Their intervention is an outrage.

British courts ruled Hamza must face justice in America.

That decision has now been put on hold so Euro judges can hear the twisted fanatic’s appeal.

Bonnell, Bianku and their chums all come from obscure countries that have never faced Islamic terrorism.

This is just the latest example of how Europe rides roughshod over the UK. It’s time we stood up and said enough and no more.

Hamza’s fate is a decision for British judges — and British judges alone.


Time for a history lesson. The Sun loves to pretend that it's Europe that's always imposing itself on Britain - when in this case it was Britain that had a major rule in the setting up of first the Convention on Human Rights and then the court itself. Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe oversaw the drafting of the document, which was ratified in 1953. The Court itself was first established in 1959, and as one of the founding members of the Council of Europe (a completely separate entity to the European Economic Committee which became the European Union), which oversees the court and the convention, we have been party to it since the beginning. The Sun is therefore claiming that Europe has been riding roughshod over us since the early 50s, or rather, that we've been more or less riding roughshod over ourselves.

The Sun of course never corrects the completely faulty impression that this is something to do with European Union, and has indeed in the past wrongly claimed that it is part of the European Union. Hence the commentators screaming for us to get out of Europe now. Even if we were to leave the European Union, it seems doubtful that we would also exit the Council of Europe, and besides, the European Convention of Human Rights is already now British law as the Human Rights Act. Hamza's appeal to the ECHR is simply his final throw of the dice and one which shouldn't be use to attack Europe in such a disengenuous manner.

Labels: , , , , , ,

Share |

8/07/2008 08:16:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, August 06, 2008 

The "smoking gun" Iraqi memo and Con Coughlin.

Continuing with the theme of hackery, although on a scale far, far removed from that involving Peaches Geldof, comes the allegations from Ron Suskind in his latest book that the White House ordered the CIA in the middle of 2003 to forge a letter from Iraq's former intelligence chief, Tahir Jalil Habbush, which was subsequently used as the smoking gun to prove links between Saddam Hussein's regime and al-Qaida. The letter claimed that Mohamed Atta, the ringleader of the September the 11th attackers, had trained in Baghdad at the Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal's camp, and that the Iraqi regime was deeply involved in the 9/11 plot.

The letter was the crudest of forgeries and has subsequently been exposed as such. It is however the first time that allegations have been made that the forging of the letter was authorised at the very highest levels of both the US government and the CIA itself. Suskind minces no words and suggests that is impeachment material. All sides, it must be said, have denied it, and there are reasons to believe, as suggested in the Salon review of Suskind's book, that this might be one of those stories that seem too good to be true because they are, more of which in the conclusion.

The same must be said for those who believed the provenance of the letter, especially considering which journalist was responsible for its publishing. Rather than going to an American source with the letter, perhaps considering the fallout that was yet to come over the leaking of dubious intelligence to Judith Miller of the New York Times and others, the memo was given to a British journalist, the Telegraph's Con Coughlin.

It's by no means the first time that Con Coughlin has been linked either with the security services or with putting into circulation dubious material which subsequently turned out to be fabricated or inaccurate. Back in 1995 Coughlin claimed that the son of the Libyan dictator Muammar Ghaddafi was involved in an attempted international currency fraud. Served with a libel writ, the Telegraph was forced to admit that its source for the story was none other than MI6, with the paper first being informed of the story during a lunch with the then Conservative foreign secretary Malcolm Rifkind. Coughlin was briefed further by another MI6 officer on two occasions before the story was subsequently published.

Despite in this instance Coughlin's links with the security establishment coming back to haunt him, neither did it seemingly alter his friendly relations with them nor their apparent diligence in supplying him with little more in some circumstances than open propaganda. As well as being handed the forged smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qaida, he also happened to come across the fabled source for the claim that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes of an order to use them. To call it a fantastical tale would not put be putting it too histrionically: Coughlin talks of a DHL flight targeted before he landed in Baghdad by "Saddam's Fedayeen (a Wikipedia article worth treating with the utmost scepticism due to the almost complete lack of sourcing)", that almost mythical organisation supposed to fight to the death for Saddam that didn't put up much of a fight during the invasion, let alone in the months following the fall of the Ba'ath party. The Iraqi colonel claims that weapons of mass destruction were distributed to the army prior to the invasion, but were never used because the army itself didn't put up a fight. It's strange that 5 years on none of these batches of WMD have ever been discovered, despite their apparent diffusion around the country.

Since then, Coughlin's sources have been no less convinced that we're all doomed. Back in November of 2006 Coughlin claimed that Iran is training the next generation of al-Qaida leaders, despite the organisation's view that Iran's brand of fundamentalist Shia Islam is heretical. Allegations have been made that Iran has been supplying help to the Taliban, despite previously helping with its overthrow, but even in the wildest dreams of conspiracy theorists and neo-conservative whack-jobs no one seriously believes that Iran would ever help al-Qaida, let alone train its next leaders. The nearest that anyone can really get to claiming links between Iran and al-Qaida is that some of its members are either hiding there or that its fighters have been using the country as a transit point.

In January of last year Coughlin was back with another exclusive, claiming that North Korea was helping Iran get ready to conduct its own nuclear test, after NK's own pitiful attempt had gone off "successfully" the previous October. This one was not quite as fantastical or laughable as the one linking Iran and al-Qaida, but was still murky in the extreme. The NIE intelligence assessment the following November concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear programme 4 years previously. That said, we should be cautious: the Israeli attack on the supposed Syrian nuclear processing plant came after evidence that it was modelled on the North Korean plant, and there are allegations along with that of heavy North Korean involvement in the operating and building of the plant, if it indeed, it must also be said, it was a nuclear site at all.

The latest revelations that Coughlin's 2003 report may well have originated from the very highest levels of US government only increases the level of scepticism with which any of his articles should be treated. At times journalists have to rely on security service figures to break stories which would otherwise never set the light of day, but as David Leigh wrote in an article from 2000, the very least that they should do if this unavoidable is be honest about the origins of such reports. It's one thing to get into bed temporarily with the intelligence community, it's quite another to act for years as their voice in the press, as Coughlin certainly appears to have done, spreading the most warped and questionable of their propaganda. As the Guardian reported in 2002 after the Telegraph admitted to the role of MI6 in their story on Ghaddafi, Coughlin was likely to recover from the indignity due to his good contacts within MI6. That certainly seems to have been exactly the case. Most humourously though, this was how Coughlin opened his commentary on the 2003 Iraqi memo:

For anyone attempting to find evidence to justify the war in Iraq, the discovery of a document that directly links Mohammed Atta, the al-Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks, with the Baghdad training camp of Abu Nidal, the infamous Palestinian terrorist, appears almost too good to be true.

As Coughlin must have certainly knew it was. Just how too good to be true has been left to Ron Suskind to expose.

Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Share |

8/06/2008 11:37:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Daily Star journalists in not making it up shocker.

One of my other sad habits other than writing this narcissistic self-abasement is regularly perusing the latest complaints made to the PCC. Ranging from the banal (Lembit Opik is a serial complainer) to the occasionally revelatory, it's instructive of journalism, especially tabloid journalism as a whole. The number of complaints made especially against the Sun and Daily Mail for intruding into personal grief can only be described as staggering.

It can also on occasion add insight into recent news stories. Remember the story last year of the community support officers that did nothing to save a child from drowning which caused a furore? It was only after the hubbub had calmed down that the Greater Manchester Police complained about the coverage in the Star and the Sun, resulting in the clarification that made clear that the community support officers had arrived several minutes after the boy, Jordon Lyon, had disappeared from view, and not before, and that rather than doing nothing to help, they had instead directed other emergency services to the scene, with an officer arriving at the scene within 5 minutes of their getting there. Greater Manchester Police also complained about the actions of journalists on the Daily Telegraph, a case which went to adjudication before it was not upheld.

None of the above however really applies to a case today which caught my eye, involving one of this blog's favourite celebrities, Ms Peaches Geldof.

Complaint:

Ms Peaches Geldof complained, through Swan Turton solicitors, that the newspaper inaccurately alleged that her Wikipedia page had been amended to claim that she was a transsexual, and that she had reacted to this by angrily emailing her friends.

Resolution:

The complaint was resolved when the newspaper published the following apology:

“On March 28 we published an article with the headline, “I’M NOT A TRANNY (AND I’M CERTAINLY NOT HUNG LIKE A DONKEY) SAYS PEACHES”. The article alleged that there had been an update for Peaches Geldof on her online encyclopaedia Wikipedia entry claiming that she was a transsexual, and that she had responded by sending out angry messages to friends to deny the story. We now accept that there was neither any such entry on Wikipedia, and nor was there any of the hysterical reaction by Peaches to the entry as described in the articles. We apologise to Peaches for any distress that the article caused”.

Stories about Wikipedia are easy enough to check because of the history trail which edits to the pages leave behind. We can therefore for instance easily see that someone on the 22nd of March edited her Wikipedia entry to read ''Peaches Honeyblossom Michelle Charlotte Angel Vanessa Geldof' is a dickhead".

On the day on which the Star reported this amazing news event, we can also see that there indeed were a number of vandalism attacks on Geldof's page. Someone from the IP address 90.197.8.210 (a Sky broadband allocation), changed the opening of the entry to Peaches Geldof -- aka No sense of humour -- and still hung like a donkey & still madly in love with Pablo and Eirah (Ray Charles) Lewis. Later still, someone with the IP address 64.236.80.62, which resolves to an address used by IPC LTD, a media company, and whom has a long Wikipedia edit history, including a very large number of edits to a page on Andrew Sumner, the current publisher director of IPC's celebrity title, Now, made three separate edits to Geldof's entry. These were variously to put that "Geldof is a man...", "She currently lives in her own little world" and that "She has recently been acting like a spoilt brat."

None of this naturally puts it plainly and clearly that Geldof is a transsexual, which is what Geldof, through her solicitors, complained about. They simply took the main edit to imply that she was a transsexual. Nor does it prove by any means that Geldof had emailed her friends to say it wasn't true or that she was angry about it. The headline "hung like a donkey" though certainly was accurate, and some might come to the conclusion that the Star was rather hasty in apologising for something that clearly had happened, despite the subsequent acceptance that any such edits had been made. It might well have been that Geldof had come into contact with someone from IPC (definitely not Andrew Sumner, surely?) who she promptly pissed off, and they edited her page as revenge and then sent on this "news" to the Star, who promptly embellished it further. It might be that the IPC stuff is just a coincidence and a Star hack noticed while looking for some reason at Geldof's Wikipedia page. It might be that Geldof in fact had been complaining to her friends about someone editing her page, and the Star story was completely accurate but decided to say it wasn't after the complaint just to get on with things.

Geldof has had a history with the Star and the PCC: she complained after two stories last year, one which claimed she was to get married in Ibiza and that her father was angry about it and the other that she had insulted Coleen McLoughlin, both of which the Star apologised for and admitted weren't true. The Daily Star of all newspapers though, in not making a story up and apologising where it may not have been strictly necessary? Who would ever have thought it?

Labels: , , , , , , ,

Share |

8/06/2008 09:00:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, August 05, 2008 

Book review: Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk.

Ever since Chuck Palahniuk (pronounced Paula-nick, fact fans) burst onto the literary scene in 1996 with the incendiary Fight Club, a novel which in just over 200 pages had more ideas than some authors have in an entire career, his star has waxed and waned appropriately. While Fight Club, with its tale of the crisis of masculinity, both warned of and mocked a world in which support groups for cancer sufferers had the monopoly on both self-improvement and emotional solidarity, where former followers and the atomised and abandoned subsequently turned to underground boxing clubs led by the charismatic Tyler Durden, the schizophrenic split personality of the unnamed narrator, which then gradually morphed into a fascist, autonomous anti-capitalist group set on destroying the banking records and bringing everyone back down to an equal zero was instantly translatable into a massively commercially and critically successful film, the possibilities of the rest of his early work, especially Survivor, remarkably similar to Fight Club, going the same way has gradually fallen away.

Although Choke, his ostensible fourth novel, has recently become a film, it's notable also as probably his weakest work, its narrative of a sexual obsessive who earns the money to pay for his sick mother's hospice treatment through tricking people into believing they've saved his life as he pretends to choke to death while eating in restaurants. The thinness of its strands perhaps lends itself to cinema because of the ease with which it can be filmed; something that can't be said for much else of his work.

Undoubtedly Palahniuk's second wind came with Haunted from 2005, a novel built around the conceit that the short stories within are the work of the participants on a literary retreat, getting away from it all to write their masterpieces. The often horrific and gruesome personal stories are tied together with a taut, increasingly absurdist narrative of their time in an old theatre, as the writers increasingly up the ante on their hosts, with the intention of emerging from the theatre at the end of their allotted time, scarred both mentally and physically but with an incredible story to tell that will ensure their financial and celebrity status until their deaths. A satire of reality television, celebrity culture and misery memoirs that takes the genre to its the obvious ultimate conclusion, that death, suffering and huge personal torment, regardless of their actual provenance are now increasingly what sells, it was the kind of work which despite its undoubted provocation simply ached to be both devoured and savoured. Including the infamous story "Guts", which purportedly led to a number of individuals fainting when Palahniuk read it at various sessions, it also features as its final entry "Obsolete", which is at least half the inspiration for the name of this very blog.

Palahniuk followed up Haunted with Rant, also known as Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey. Written in the style of an oral history, a double-pun as Rant is "patient zero" of an especially virulent form of rabies and a reasonably transparent tribute to the works of both JG Ballard and David Cronenberg, it never quite reached the dizzy heights of Haunted, but its background of a dystopian America in which there are "Daytimers" and "Nighttimers" was filled in enough for those turned off by its denouement, where it's implied that Rant might the second coming, to be satisfied.

When the news came through that Palahniuk's next novel was to be set in the porn industry, on the set of an attempt to break the record for the number of sexual partners one woman has got through in an allotted time, it was hard not to be discouraged. Even by his generally high standards, to get anything out of such a restrictive setting, and from the three characters from whom the story emerges, three men lined up to take part in the record attempt was going to be difficult. It really did seem that Palahniuk was trying to live up to the criticism, where he increasingly broaches more and more lurid topics, to top each new degradation with something worse.

Snuff then is perhaps not as bad as it might well have been. Told from the perspective of three of the six hundred men Cassie Wright intends to have sex with in one session, each labelled by the wrangler Sheila, who also enters the narrative, we have Mr.72, the virgin who's grown up with Ms Wright's films, bought the plastic vagina and right breast modelled on her own and who's also convinced that he's the son whom Wright gave away; Mr.137, a former star on a prime-time detective show brought low by the revelation that he himself starred in a gang-bang porn film, albeit a gay one as the receiver, looking to restart his career by proving he isn't passive after all; and Mr.600, also known as Branch Bacardi, a celebrated "woodsman" long past his prime, whose relationship with Wright is as long as both their careers.

As always, Palahniuk has done his research. Annabel Chong, Jasmin St. Claire and Sabrina Johnson all feature, as do, as the pages turn, the Roman empress Messalina, Kegel exercises, Andrea Dworkin, Naomi Wolf, Ariel Levy, Catherine Blackledge and then actors and actresses that either suffered for their craft through injury or otherwise. The one thing that perhaps make you wonder whether this was a cynical, quick exercise is one obvious mistake, on a passage on how pornography and its users have been early adopters and influencers down the years, claiming that HD won the battle against Blu-ray for the world's dominant high-definition technology. As any geek will tell you, the opposite is the case, although the porn producers of America did mostly stump for HD. That error undermines the rest of the book's quick-fire, ratatat style synonymous with Palahniuk of producing "facts" along with the underlying narrative. It's impossible to check all the examples of the silent film actors who never appeared again due to their voices not being considered up to the task who are mentioned, of the tragedies that befell others due to the vagaries of production mistakes, but that one falsehood makes you wonder about the truthfulness of all the rest. That sloppiness previously wouldn't have happened.

Slow to start, despite its brevity, and with the puns and jokes on film titles parodied by porn producers quickly wearing very thin indeed, Snuff doesn't come into its own until the final 60-70 pages, although the chapters from the perspective of the wrangler Sheila are vastly superior to anything from any one of the three male characters, and even then it doesn't come close to recreating the intense, page-turning atmosphere which some of his previous work created.

Indeed, what's most noticeable is just what Palahniuk has abandoned from his usual story-telling. Gone are the explanatory passages which set the scene, although the minimalism and usual perspective are still in evidence. The broader brush-strokes and driving, defining narrative have also been left out, but what's most lacking is the disappearance of the satire itself, especially when there's so much scope for it. There's little more homoerotic and also disturbing than 600 almost naked men queueing up to have sex, three at a time with one exhausted, in incredible pain and apparently set on dying porn veteran, yet this is instead driven by character rather than by the author's usual mordant social analysis. Wright is in fact surprisingly amiable and friendly despite everything, even towards the end.

That's what most frustrates about Snuff. For all the supposed daring involved in putting this situation into a novel as the blurb claims, very little is actually done with it. What is an extraordinary setting makes for what is perversely, a mostly straight novel. Even the sex itself is probably less graphic than that in Choke. The shame is that you would have most certainly expected Palahniuk to have something to say about a society in which the young are growing up with porn stars as their idols, where it is increasingly defining our notions of sex and where the ultimate sign of love (or power) seems to be for the male to ejaculate on his partner's face (the "facial"). The one bright spot is that Palahniuk's next project is a far more tantalising prospect: 'Pygmy', described by him as a dark comedy about terrorism and racism, set around an exchange student sent to the states whose science project is set to explode in Washington DC killing millions. It might well be that pornography at the moment still fluxes even our finest critics and satirists.

Labels: , , , ,

Share |

8/05/2008 08:18:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, August 04, 2008 

Right motives, wrong targets.

Via the Daily Mash.

As New Labour decides whether or not to overthrow the leader it only installed this time last year, the good ship Cameron continues to sail on with the sea calm and nary a cloud on the horizon. While any half-decent historian will tell you that the notion that history repeats is a fallacy, it's difficult not to see the Conservatives if not repeating New Labour's pre-1997 detoxification of the "brand" then certainly following it closely.

A case in point is Michael Gove's speech today to the left-wing IPPR think-tank. First, confront the "enemy", or at least an organisation that has traditionally been either critical or exercised undue influence, head-on. Labour did it with clause 4 and then the unions, and while Cameron's Conservatives have so far not achieved a similar high-publicity example of themselves either repudiating their past or moving on from it, it's certainly happening in a much more guarded fashion. Second, while in front of this organisation, make clear you're not going to repeat the "mistakes" of the past, or openly criticise past policy. Gove therefore highlights past Conservative hostility to homosexuality as indulging prejudice and missing the point. It has to be said that the party could hardly do otherwise when a good proportion of it recently celebrated Alan Duncan's civil partnership, but it's still making the separation point. Next is to rehabilitate single mothers - those of Peter Lilley's "little list", whom far from being sponging layabouts getting knocked up to get council houses are in fact mainly being abandoned by the fathers.

So far, so good - Gove might be angering the Melanie Phillips' of this world, but few others. This being modern politics however, and certainly the modern Conservatives, something has to be attacked for the speech to get noticed. Hence we look for something that is politically acceptable to attack and which can't bite the party back in any meaningful fashion - the notion that magazines such as Nuts and Zoo influence young men to not take their responsibilities seriously - and Gove sets about them. Headlines follow, everyone tuts about how awful the lads' mags are, and who, after all, except for their editors and publishers can pretend otherwise, and Gove's job is done.

This covers the fact that Gove doesn't really offer any substantial policy difference whatsoever to the government's, except on the bung of up to £20 a week to families that live up to the nuclear idyll. Some will doubtless welcome this as the Conservatives turning over a new leaf, accepting that society has changed, that blaming the most vulnerable doesn't achieve much in the end except raising the blood pressure of the good burghers of middle England, but it doesn't do much to disprove the accusations of vacuity. That moaning about modern politics being vacuous has become almost akin to moaning about all Status Quo songs sounding the same doesn't alter the fact that it's true - and even politicians themselves have got in on the act, Miliband's vacuous article last week apparently the response to a vacuous George Osborne Grauniad article, Tony Blair having the temerity to accuse Gordon Brown's policies of being vacuous - next we'll have John McCain comparing Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.

It also conveniently covers up for this remarkably hilarious line from Gove which follows his denunciation of Nuts and Zoo:

The contrast with the work done by women's magazines, and their publishers, to address their readers in a mature and responsible fashion, is striking.

I'm sorry, what? What women's magazines is Gove talking about? It can't be Cosmopolitan and these other equally cerebral titles, informing their readers of the "latest" blowjob techniques, 50 ways to the best orgasm and all the latest things to waste their money on while worrying endlessly about the effects of ageing. It can't be those almost exclusively marketed to women celebrity titles like Heat and Closer, which can't make up their minds which celebrities are fat and which are skinny and which hate and don't hate their bodies, which promote instant self-fulfilment just as much as the likes of Nuts and Zoo, and are similarly obsessed with cosmetic surgery. It also surely can't be the likes of Take a Break, Love it! and all those others, which combine horror stories of abusive boyfriends, murdering husbands and deformed children, with again, continually uplifting stories about how cosmetic surgery has substantially improved someone's life. How about those teenage girl magazines, Cosmo Girl etc, which not so long ago were horrifying politicians with their tales of promiscuity and open sex advice?

Attacks on the above, with the exception perhaps of Heat etc are strictly off limits mainly because the Take a Break reader was recently identified as the latest substrata voter who can be made more malleable through touchy-feely sessions with the leader, and Cosmopolitan and others have on occasion also featured articles on Cameron and how, like Blair before him, he sets the bar in being both personable, reasonably pleasing to the eye and of course, well-dressed. It's also apparent now that young women aren't the enemy, but perhaps young men are. They're probably the least likely to vote in any case, and going by past impressions with Cameron, they don't seem to impressed by him. The most easily disposable demographic therefore gets it in the neck. It's also worth noting that Gove attacks only Nuts and Zoo and not the more "up-market" men's titles, like GQ, with their positive coverage of Cameron.

Gove could, if he or his party had the guts, have extended the argument even further. It's not just the men and women's magazines, it's the tabloid newspapers too. After all, they increasingly resemble a daily edition of Heat, and the Star and Sport are lads' mags dressed up in daily newspaper clothing. Don't they too "reinforce a very narrow conception of beauty and a shallow approach towards women" and "celebrate thrill-seeking and instant gratification without ever allowing any thought of responsibility towards others, or commitment, to intrude"? Shouldn't Gove be asking Rebekah Wade, Paul Dacre, Rupert Murdoch and Lord Northcliffe what they think they're doing "revelling in, or encouraging, selfish irresponsibility among young men" (and women) seeing they too profit out of it? Considering Gove was formerly a hack on the Times he might be more likely than others to get an answer out of Red Rupert. Reply? "Rack off and mind your own business," most likely.

The very last thing Gove and his party could afford to do, obviously, is to annoy either the Mail or Murdoch too much. The biggest irony is that those that have long professed to be public barometers of morality have abandoned it in pursuit of profits outside of editorials, columns and self-justification for their exposure of sex scandals. They are far, far more widely read than any of the lads' or women's magazines and have a far more corrosive effect on our culture, yet their power means they are almost unimpeachable outside of the courts.

This is why the idea that the Conservatives will be less authoritarian than New Labour runs so hollow, as the usually excellent Jenni Russell believes. The current sops to more locally devolved power, the abolition of ID cards etc are window dressing until the party is once again in power. No one seems to have noticed that on prisons, on welfare, the Conservatives are still to the right of New Labour, and the abiding impression is that they intend to out-Blairite the ultra-Blairites, and unless you haven't noticed, they don't tend to be either liberal or believers in the idea of local autonomy. The exceptions, such as parents being allowed to set up their own schools, is to defuse the row over grammars, while the emphasis on the private and voluntary sector over the public is because it's cheaper. On the things that matters, the Tories will be just as right-wing and managerial as New Labour, and just as bad in selecting what needs to be criticised as Gove is today.

Labels: , , , , ,

Share |

8/04/2008 08:14:00 PM | | | links to this post

Saturday, August 02, 2008 

Weekend links.

The Scum, despite the complete lack of evidence is continuing to keep up the pretence that Barry George is guilty of the Jill Dando murder: their crime editor Mike Sullivan, known for being incredibly close to the police, producing 10 supposed facts which weren't presented to the jury.

George's conviction for attempted rape was common knowledge, in the public domain and also completely irrelevant. The same goes for his supposed "raid" on Kensington Palace. Incredibly weak also is the supposed evidence for his obsession with celebrity blondes - he had some videos which had blonde celebrities on them, amazing! George was a hoarder, and had up to 800 newspapers in his home whem it was raided by police. Some just happened to have Diana in them, although it's true he was one of the first to lay flowers after her death. The neighbour's allegation that he was always talking about Jill and had a photo of him with her goes against all the other evidence from others that he had never mentioned her, and the police never found any such photograph, faked or otherwise. The estate agent link is so weak as to be completely worthless. The police successfully contaminated a piece of forensic evidence and then have the audacity to complain about it being ruled inadmissible. George was in the street on the day - but hours before Dando was murdered! Prison cell confessions should always be considered as highly dubious, especially considering George's mental state, and the "lookalike's scare" is just laughable.

Also worth comparing is the Scum article on a latest civil liberties human rights outrage from Iraq with the Guardian's rather more staid and detailed version.

Elsewhere:

Polly Toynbee loses her head completely over David Miliband. Mr Eugenides and Jamie respond.

Centre Right wonders whether the incoming Conservative government will save us from the scourge of anti-British left-wing multiculturalist novels and authors. donpaskini points and laughs.

The Orwell Prize will be posting extracts from Orwell's diaries starting from August the 9th, 70 years on exactly from when they were written.

Penny Red on being stared at and regarded as a sexual object. As someone who suffers from the tendency to gawp, and subjected two unfortunate young women to a daily performance of such pathetic inadequacy and doubtless made their lives far more uncomfortable than they should have been, to put it mildly, it's instructive to read exactly how it does feel. As the Manics (or Richey James Edwards at least) put it, beauty is such a terrible thing.

Labels: , , , ,

Share |

8/02/2008 10:16:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Justice at last for Barry George, but still none for Jill Dando.

Did anyone, except for the Metropolitan police, the lawyers at the Crown Prosecution Service that authorised the original charge, 10 members of the original jury, and the judges that rejected his first appeal believe that Barry George was guilty of the murder of Jill Dando? Perhaps a better question now would be how many of those aforementioned organisations and individuals still believe that Barry George *is* guilty of the murder of Jill Dando.

For it certainly seems that the police and the CPS, despite everything, continue to be willing to defend their horlicks of a case, even after it has finally been proved to have been one of the most rotten and circumstantial to have come before a court in recent times. The only evidence that even slightly linked George to Dando were the single particle of "firearms residue discharge" found in one of his jacket pockets when his home was searched, evidence which was later ruled inadmissible because of the potential for contamination, and a single fibre found on Dando's raincoat, which the prosecution claimed came from a pair of C&A trousers found, again, when they searched George's flat.

George, like others before him, such as Colin Stagg and Stephen Kiszko, seems to have been picked up for little other reason than the fact that he was considered to be the local oddball. George certainly was weird: as a result of both his low IQ and a personality disorder, he went through a phase of passing obsessions, one of which during the early 80s was with guns and militaria. Later he became infatuated with Queen, and regularly claimed to be Freddie Mercury's cousin, going so far as to change his name by deed poll to Barry Bulsara. He also, as the court heard, followed local women and took photographs of them, on a number of occasions harassing them to such an extent that they either became frightened or agitated. During the 80s he was imprisoned for attempted rape, a crime he pleaded guilty to, and a neighbour also claimed that he had assaulted her.

None of this however even begins to make the case that he was a murderer, let alone the murderer of Jill Dando. The murder weapon itself was never found, and apart from the infamous photograph depicting him in a gas mask with a starting pistol and the magazines, both from the 1980s, there was nothing to suggest that George had owned any weapons for years. What was clear was that the murder of Jill Dando was a carefully planned and executed assassination, of the type that suggests that it might well have been professional. The very last adjective you would use to describe George would be professional: tests on his memory, planning and carrying out tasks suggested that he was in the lowest 1% of the population. George also never hid his obsessions; he talked about them incessantly, to anyone who would listen. Not only did he never speak of Jill Dando, but if he had killed her, for him to both successfully get away with it for nearly a year and also not mention it to anyone would have been extraordinary. Memorably, Paddy Hill, one of the Birmingham Six, said that you wouldn't trust George to go to Tesco, let alone to carry out such a meticulous murder.

After 8 years, George has finally been proven to be completely innocent. Prison is bad enough when you're guilty and able-bodied; for George it would not be an exaggeration to describe it as his own personal hell. Like other victims of miscarriages of justice, what they don't want so much as compensation is an apology from those who first investigated them, who rubber-stamped the prosecution, and who, in George's case, have continued to defend the case even after they have been found to be not guilty. To do so however would be to admit that the police, completely stuck, did the clichéd thing and either decided to deliberately fit up the local nutter, or saw what they wanted to see in the flimsy forensic evidence which they collected. Some sections of the media have spent a lot of time of late decrying the Portuguese police for their bungled investigation into Madeleine McCann's disappearance, criticism which although valid in some places has also bordered on the xenophobic. Like in Praia da Luz, the trail of the real guilty party has long gone cold. You can rest assured that tomorrow London's finest will not be receiving the same levels of opprobrium that their investigation surely deserves.

Labels: , ,

Share |

8/02/2008 12:16:00 AM | | | links to this post

Friday, August 01, 2008 

Jordan gets her kit off for the Times.

A couple of years back the Guardian delighted its readers by giving column space to Peaches Honeyblossom Michelle Charlotte Angel Vanessa Geldof to talk about herself whilst one of the regulars was away. Giving Simon Jenkins a run for his money, she wrote of MySpace, her boyfriend and her dog.

At least Peaches probably wrote the column herself. You can't necessarily say the same for Katie Price, who's taken to the pages of the Times (yes, that's the Times) to bemoan the fact that she wasn't allowed to attend a polo meeting, told, despite paying £6,000, that she wasn't the sort of person they wanted.

Normally this blog would be completely opposed to snobbery it all its forms, including to a thick as horse shit glamour model who personifies everything wrong with modern culture. Can you however imagine a more suitable place for a missile or meteor to strike than the Cartier Polo International, at the Chinawhite tent, where those inside have paid £6,000 for the privilege of watching people who resemble horses ride horses while whacking around a white ball?

No, we couldn't afford to lose Jordan in such a way. There has to surely be a more fitting, violent and amusing demise for her to suffer. Like a knitting needle to the chest.

(I'm dreadfully sorry for this unfunny rubbish. Jenni Russell, incidentally, metaphorically eviscerates her.)

Labels: , , , , , ,

Share |

8/01/2008 10:11:00 PM | | | links to this post

About

  • This is septicisle
profile

Links

Last posts

Archives

Email me
Syndicate this site (XML)
Powered by Blogger
and Blogger Templates