Saturday, June 20, 2009 

Weekend links.

The big story remains Iran, but it's getting more and more difficult to ascertain what really is happening in Tehran. Riot police and the Basijs seem to have prevented any mass demonstration from taking place today in response to yesterday's speech by Khamenei, and the real worry is that the crackdown is now taking place even further behind closed doors. The Graun's daily blog of action has today's round-up, while Ten Percent has a lament for the latest turn in events.

Elsewhere, Glen Jenvey has raised his ugly head again, apparently throwing his toys out of the pram because the Daily Mail linked him to the protests in Luton against radical Islam, ordering the FBI to rip up his statement to them concerning Abu Hamza's links with various other jihadists, supposedly to be used in their case to deport Hamza to the US. He also blames "far left" bloggers for threatening to "chop his head" off. This would of course be the same Glen Jenvey who was almost certainly behind the leaving of comments on various blogs which suggested that Tim Ireland was a paedophile. Even more interestingly, he claims to have phoned Anjem Choudary and the two are to meet. Here's to the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

On the blogs then, Paul Linford has his weekly column on who's most likely to claim the speaker's chair, Nosemonkey has two fine posts, one on the dishonesty of the debate on the EU and on "becoming EU-sceptic", Flying Rodent provides a pithy thought on the Iranian presidential candidates, Chris Dillow explains inequality vs relative poverty, A Very Public Sociologist considers the curious silence of political Islam on Iran, Mad Ranter rants on the idiocy of Liverpool council on censoring smoking in films, Sim-O fisks the BNP and the tabloids on claims that "gipsies" can jump the queue in the NHS, the Heresiarch notes that even Khamenei knows about the expenses scandal and John B has a contentious view on wildcat strikes.

In the papers, Marina Hyde connects the dots between MPs, bankers and the royal family, Polly Toynbee defends the BBC in her usual unconvincing fashion, Matthew Parris points out that MPs are an interest group like any other, Peter Oborne notes the fissures within the Tories over Europe continue, whilst also condemning Jack Straw as a shameless hack, Deborah Orr thinks that the redaction of the expenses papers shows just how much MPs fear the public and lastly David McKittrick sees Belfast as a city of alienated youth.

As for worst tabloid article, the award clearly goes to Tom Rawstorne, for a especially disgusting article crawling all over the sex life of the missing Claudia Lawrence, the prurient detail naturally being justified by how it might explain where she is. Of course.

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6/20/2009 09:36:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, June 19, 2009 

Hardly the end of the affair.

When it comes to shooting yourself in the foot, the parliamentary authorities have done the equivalent of blowing the entire appendage off with a sawn-off shotgun. The expenses scandal was finally begin to simmer down, the Telegraph having already deciphered and disseminated all the most outrageous claims, with the full release of the documents in full threatening to be a damp squib, only of interest for those who really wish to know exactly what their MP's favourite taxpayer-funded meal is. By censoring almost the entirety of some of the claims, all they've succeeded in doing is bringing the bile back to the very front of the throat of every phone-in ranter in the country.

At times since the Telegraph first splashed on their ill-gotten gained CD/DVD, I've felt like the only person in the country not to be demanding that MPs be summarily executed with their heads then displayed atop spikes on London Bridge. Of course, that MPs have turned out to be such humongous hypocrites, evading tax, whether it was "allowed" under the rules or not, claiming that they live with their sister and spending our money on duck houses and cleaning moats is certainly disreputable, but I find it hard to summon any great fury mainly because except in a very few tiny cases, there seems to have been no actual rules broken, let alone fraud. As much as some claim to be whiter than whiter, most of us will probably admit to trying it on at times; at worst, what most have done is simply stretched the rules as they existed, while some went further and did so to absolute breaking point, such as Gerald Kaufman with his attempt to charge the taxpayer for an £8,000 Bang and Olfsen TV. That I find for some reason far more enraging than some of the more notorious claims. Equally, the opprobrium hasn't fallen on those most deserving of it: those that have other highly rewarding interests that still didn't think that claiming for "seagrass", mugs from Tate Modern and "Elephant lamps", as Michael Gove did could possibly be objectionable. Then there's just bitter, wormwood-esque irony, like George Osborne claiming a staggering £47 for 2 DVDs featuring a speech of his on "value for taxpayers' money".

Mostly though, as I've mentioned before, there just seems little reason to get angry when there are so many more important things to be livid about. We are talking at most, of millions of pounds being improperly spent or claimed; at the moment we're currently paying around £30bn simply on the interest from our current debt. There's the millions, if not billions being spent on management consultants; the billions being wasted because of the government obsession with the private finance initative; and the countless billions being poured into the toilet which is this government's repeated, incessant, hapless IT schemes. These though are mindboggling sums, which cannot be directly linked to any one individual, hence there's no one to blame. Whether it's bankers, where Fred Goodwin rapidly became the biggest hate figure in the country, or Margaret Moran or Hazel Blears, we can instead put a face to the fury. It's the same with benefit fraud, where the newspapers always have a field day. It doesn't seem though that anything other than money could have caused such a scandal, or at least one which has inspired such rage and gone on for so long. It isn't the case, as Anthony Steen put it, that people were envious of his big house; it is however those whom have failed to benefit from the boom years who are now falling even further behind are fuming at how MPs could kit out their houses and pay their food bills without even a thought for how their own constituents are having to live.

More depressing is how the momentum which was behind the moves towards reform, which went hand in hand with the revelations in the Telegraph for some time, has suddenly dropped off. Partially it fell away as attention turned to whether Gordon Brown was going to survive as prime minister or not, but it also seems to have failed because MPs were only ever paying lip service to it, and as the race to be the next speaker has shown, as attention has turned away so has the belief that there has to be change. The House of Commons is a notoriously conservative institution, overturning even Robin Cook's minor reforms to the working hours because some MPs felt it had ruined the "atmosphere", and as the everlasting cliche goes, turkeys are unlikely to vote for Christmas given the choice, but you would have thought that even they would have realised that something has to be done. It does remain whether or not the public themselves ever were really behind such wide-ranging reform, but it is still quite clearly what is needed to re-energise politics. The exchanges of the last week, with the nonsense on stilts which has been the portraying of Cameron as "Mr 10%" and the general refusal to even be slightly straight with the public on the cuts which are going to have to come have only reinforced that. The European election results were both a warning and an opportunity: they showed politics at its worst and best, with the BNP victories because Labour voters stayed at home, and the successes of other minor parties showing the breadth of political dissent and debate which is stifled in the three party consensus which is Westminster. Only those that are prepared to end that monopoly deserve to be supported at the next election, and whatever our thoughts on the expenses furore, we will have them to thank if it does eventually lead to the change which is so desperately needed.

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6/19/2009 09:23:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, June 18, 2009 

Collusion, lying and willing torturers.

Craig Murray quite reasonably wonders whether he's been airbrushed out of history, as the Guardian keeps up its rather belated "exclusives" concerning who knew what and when over the mistreatment of British detainees and our corresponding collusion in torture. I'm more concerned though with how this yet again shows just how useless the Intelligence and Security Committee is. In their report on rendition a couple of years back, which was, it goes without saying, a complete and utter whitewash, they believed the claims of MI6 that they knew absolutely nothing about anyone being mistreated anywhere until the Abu Ghraib scandal emerged:

150. It was only when news surfaced of the mistreatment of detainees at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2004 that the UK Government realised that there were real risks of CIDT:
Back in 2003 we were concerned about secret facilities but we did not at that stage, I think, make an automatic connection between secret facilities and mistreatment. That sort of connection grew later as more allegations came to light or… things like Abu Ghraib came to light, which led you to believe, just a minute, if that is happening there, what might be happening in secret facilities.

This itself was unbelievable: what was the point of "secret" facilities except to subject those held there to the sort of treatment which would eventually severely embarrass both the United States and this country? The idea itself that MI6 couldn't or didn't know what was going on was even more ridiculous: what is the point of intelligence gathering organisations if they can't even work out what our allies are up to?

We know now for certain however that MI6 knew full well what was going on as soon as they started being allowed access to prisoners with UK connections, as could have been expected. In January 2002, after an MI6 officer realised that someone in US custody was being mistreated, they sent out official advice which while telling their agents that they could not be seen to condone torture, they were not under any obligation to intervene to prevent it, something which directly breaches the obligation not to be complicit in that mistreatment.

MI6 can't be blamed for lying; that is after all what they are trained to do from the moment they join the service and is to be expected. Our politicians can however be blamed, for both knowing full well what was happening despite their denials and for publishing those denials as if they were true. There is only one way to get to the bottom of the abuses which have happened under the rendition programmes and the mistreatment in the name of the war on terror, and that is through a fully independent judicial inquiry. At the same time, the ISC needs to be abolished and a fully independent watchdog of the security services needs to be established, with the Independent Police Complaints Commission as the model, modified as necessary. Liars may then not be able to prosper after all.

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Wednesday, June 17, 2009 

Analogue Britain.

For once, you have to hand it to the Tories. Their description of the Digital Britain report as "government of the management consultants, for the management consultants by the management consultants" could hardly ring truer. Ofcom, that mightiest of quangos, has always been run with an innate bias towards commercial television, probably because those in charge used to be... heads of commercial communications companies. That much is evident in Lord Carter's report, the former head of Ofcom as well as late of the much maligned NTL.

On the face of it, things could have far worse, especially on the piracy front. The lobbying, not just from the usual suspects but from unions who have also bizarrely signed up to the updated claims that home taping is killing music etc has been ferocious, and their favourite fantasy, that there would be three strikes and then you're out, was mooted as being the plan. Instead there's the continuation of the letter writing scheme, and the possibility that ISPs might be forced to send details of the most prolific and unrelenting uploaders and downloaders to the rights holders, which seems unlikely to be followed through by those who wish to keep their businesses growing. Part of the problem that the record industry has is that they have been for so long and continue to be some of the most unsympathetic characters around, claiming to be "innovating and investing" when all they do is churn out the same old shit time and time again, as you could not fail to notice by looking at the current top 10, or the "emergence" of yet more manufactured faux-soul crap as Pixie Lott and Paloma Faith, only a year on from the manufactured faux-soul crap of Adele and Duffy. The same is the case with the film industry; most deserving of protection is the games industry, but they are hardly even noticed. The idea also that ISPs can cut file-sharing by 70% in a year is a hilarious, and obviously made by those without a slightest clue of how the internet works.

The top-slicing of the licence fee is far more contentious. While using that left over from the digital switchover fund to put towards universal broadband is a fair enough move, the BBC having to step in to ensure that ITV keeps putting out regional news is ridiculous on two levels. Firstly, that ITV doesn't have the money to keep such a public service going, when they have three digital channels transmitting constant repeats and on ITV2 some of the worst programmes ever to be broadcast on British television, no doubt costing millions, and secondly that if ITV really can't afford it, why duplicate something which the BBC already provides? Wouldn't it make far more sense to instead enable the struggling local newspaper groups to step into the breach, giving them the opportunity to invest and transform themselves at the same time? Apparently not. As the BBC Trust has argued, all the splashing around of the licence fee will do is further the resentment of what is, despite the great good that the BBC does, a regressive tax. At the moment everyone knows what they're getting from it; the cutting and redistributing of it will only confuse and confound matters.

Most lacking though is any vision for rolling-out the next generation of broadband. By 2012 all are supposed to be able to access a 2meg connection, which is just about good enough for the internet as it currently is; by 2017, when the so-called third generation of broadband connectivity is meant to be completed, things are going to be incredibly different. Difficult as it is to predict, by then we're bound to be seeing the streaming of ultra high definition content as standard, requiring bandwidth far beyond that currently available to the vast majority. As thinkbroadband points out, by 2017 at the moment we're only going to have the kind of network capacity which the more enlightened and forward thinking nations have currently already put in place, leaving us way behind the pack. The Guardian also identifies the other issue with the £6 tax on the cost of a landline to fund this: it's a subsidy from the public going direct to the private sector, the ones who will reap all the benefits. Once again the foolishness of privatising assets and not taking even the slightest of stakes in the emergent companies rears its ugly head.

The resulting package as a whole is a fudge, as seems to be the only thing that the current government can agree on, pleasing no one and priortising nothing. Management consultants it seems have a lot to answer for.

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6/17/2009 11:22:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, June 16, 2009 

The exposure of NightJack and a potential disaster for blogging and journalism.

The decision by the Times to "out" NightJack, and Justice Eady's corresponding ruling that bloggers have no right to anonymity must rank as one of the most short-sighted and potentially damaging to journalism episodes in quite some time.

Quite why the Times took it upon itself to discover the true identity of the winner of this year's Orwell prize for blogging is itself a mystery. Its justifications, such as they are, that he revealed details about cases and gave tips on how to evade justice, are pitiful. NightJack had done nothing to attract attention to himself other than presumably putting himself forward for the Orwell prize, and the fact that he could write to such an ability that he pulled in readers who admired his ability to analyse both his job, the politics surrounding it and the social problems which he had to deal with. NightJack had actually stopped blogging shortly before he won the Orwell prize, and had put his sights on writing a novel, rather than bringing out a book of the best of the blog, for which he had presumably had numerous offers. He didn't even turn up to receive the prize, as someone wanting to remain anonymous would never have done, and had also undoubtedly not economically benefited from his writing.

It would be tempting to put down the reason for the Times exposing Nightjack as simple jealousy that they didn't have a writer of such calibre prepared to put pen to paper for them, yet the Times has been one of the few newspapers that have given space to reasonably well-known bloggers to write original pieces for it. Likewise, the smug neo-con Oliver Kamm was taken on by the paper and is now one of its leader writers as a direct result of his stultifying blogging and obsession with attacking Noam Chomsky. Quite rightly, others have remembered how the Sunday Times treated the Girl With a One Track Mind, the sex blogger who was outed in a fashion which would have shamed the tabloids. It isn't an exact comparison, as Zoe Margolis had just published a book of her blog and didn't write about anything as high-minded as Nightjack, preferring to detail her tedious sex life in a pseudo-intellectual style, but it seems to have been a portent of what was to come.

The main reason though for why this is such an ill wind for journalism as a whole is the implications it has for whistleblowing, which if the Times had stopped to consider for a second it would have surely noted. Eady has in effect ruled that anyone in the public services who wants to bring attention to something which they think is a cause for concern, but which by doing so they would breach "discipline regulations" has no right to protection. Arguably, Nightjack was not performing such a public service in his writing, but this surely still has a potentially chilling effect for those who do. In fact, what this ruling seems to do is ensure that those who do want to whistleblow will have to go to publications like the Times for protection; if they do it themselves through blogging then newspapers have a justification for uncovering their true identity.

Newspapers concerned with the protection of their sources will be deeply worried by this ruling. If Nightjack has no right to privacy, then just who does? According to the Times' analysis, Eady based part of his decision on the previous ruling concerning George Galloway's exposure of Mazher Mahmood, a battle which this blog was involved in. Ironically, it was then the Times' sister publication which was fighting against their top reporter having his cover blown, but the two cases are surely completely different. Mahmood was a journalist who had ruined people's lives and had arguably been involved in entrapping individuals to develop his stories. When he himself failed to entrap Galloway in a similar fashion, he reacted to the publication of two grainy, unclear photographs in a ridiculous fashion, claiming it put his life in danger, something which was treated with short shrift. Mahmood was a hypocrite; Nightjack is not, and was not exposing anyone.

Just how potentially damaging this ruling could be is illustrated by the current battle going on in Northern Ireland, where the Sunday Tribune journalist Suzanne Breen has been defending herself against attempts by the police service of the province to obtain the identity of her sources, who informed her that the Real IRA had claimed responsibility for the murder of two soldiers outside Massereene barracks in Antrim in March. Unlike Mahmood, Breen's life almost certainly would be threatened should her source be revealed, yet that hasn't stopped the police from treating her life with such apparent contempt. Less seriously, this surely also threatens journalists who write under pseudonyms, something which the Times has again also overlooked; why should they be protected when bloggers aren't?

Furthermore, isn't the current situation in Iran, where those trying to let the world know what is happen are having to resort to Twatter further evidence of how dangerous this ruling is? According to Eady, those doing so are indulging in public activity where they have no right to anonymity, the kind of idea that would delight totalitarian regimes everywhere. Similarly, newspapers would be outraged were the government to do what the Times has just done, demanding that they reveal the source for sensitive articles, claiming it would be a threat to press freedom. It turns out that all the Times and News International care about is their own self-interest, which rather undermines their repeated past criticisms of Eady and the Human Rights Act for establishing a privacy law by stealth. It seems that celebrities are protected, while everyone else is fair game. The Times may yet come to regret their supreme selfishness and lack of dedication to protecting sources bitterly.

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6/16/2009 09:30:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, June 15, 2009 

An open letter to the Iranian youth: one solution, revolution.

Dear friends,

Very few of you are likely to actually read this, what with many internet sites being blocked by the authorities and with the language barrier, but those of us watching overseas with trepidation at the turmoil on the streets of your capital and other cities are both worried and optimistic in equal measure at the sudden eruption of what appears to the beginning of a movement against the lack of freedom which has become all the more burdensome since the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005.

That result was partially sparked by apathy. After two terms of the reformist inclined Khatami, his liberalising measures stymied and stopped in their tracks by the Guardian Council and your supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, it was little wonder that some of you were dismayed and simply didn't turn out. During that time there were protests against the rigidly conservative social mores and censorship imposed upon you, both in 1999 and 2003, both of which ended with more repression and the rounding up of the ringleaders, whilst the candidates who wanted change were denied the opportunity to stand in elections. You had seen what the response was to the slightest call for change, and no one will blame you for temporarily taking the eye of the ball.

It sometimes takes a polarising figure to set off in motion movements which have the potential to lead wherever you want to take them. If you'll forgive the already rather hackneyed comparison, Bush inexorably led to Obama. Ahmadinejad, a Holocaust denier, serial liar, economic disaster and general buffoon, but highly appealing to those who have nothing to whom he offers much, similar perhaps to Hugo Chavez, also attractive but undoubtedly a centralising and double-edged personality, is what led you to coalesce around Mir Hossein Mousavi, someone previously unknown in the West, although our attention span at the best of times is not the greatest. Mousavi was not the most liberal and reformist inclined candidate, but was a happy medium; you knew that Mehdi Karroubi simply couldn't win. For those of us who have recently had to put up with everyone talking about "snouts being in the trough" because their MP claimed a few dinners with taxpayers' money, which it seems is all that we care about, the sight of the vast crowds turning out, the almost party atmosphere as the "morality police" stayed out of the way for the first time in years was inspiring and made us believe that you too were about to choose change.

Doubtless many of you were worried that Ahmadinejad would sneak home, Mousavi having only towards the end of the campaign gained the support that he needed, and if he had, similarly you would have almost certainly accepted it. We can't know for certain, but your response above all suggests that the vote was stolen. Why, the cynics will suggest, would the Guardian Council have allowed Mousavi and Karroubi to stand if they weren't prepared to potentially let them become president, when they could have denied them to begin with, but it seems simply that your rulers didn't expect you to turn out in numbers similar to 1997. How though could Mousavi have been beaten in his home state? Why was the result announced within 2 hours? Why did the Mousavi campaign believe, and indeed have been told that they had been the run away winners by the interior ministry only for it subsequently turn out the Ahmadinejad had won with 67% of the vote?

Your thoughts will almost certainly be turning back to 1979, or rather what you have been taught about it. The overthrowing of the Shah, supported to the hilt by the CIA, with his departure still recently bemoaned by the likes of Donald Rumsfeld, was without doubt a wonderful thing. Sadly though, like many other revolutions, from the French to the Russian to the Chinese, the replacement has turned out to be little better than what came before, if not in some cases worse. While 1979 occurred because the people were united, whether they were religious or atheists, together they triumphed. It was then that those who objected to the establishment of a theocracy were purged, imprisoned and broken. Since then change has had to be incremental, and slight, and you have worked within those imposed boundaries, respecting what your parents and elders had achieved.

Isn't it now clear however, that those very constraints have become intolerable? They allowed you to vote for reform, and then they denied those elected to implement it the opportunity to do so. Now they have denied you the opportunity for your vote to even be counted. In its way, this has turned out to be to your advantage: the change that most of you want would probably have been denied had Mousavi been allowed to ascend to the presidency. Those of you who want to have the choice whether or not you wear the hijab, let alone other far more radical changes, would have almost certainly been left disappointed.

Even when it seems this clear, you are almost certainly scared and hesitant about the conclusion which you have independently reached. Would overthrowing the theocracy be not just disrespecting, but spitting in the face of your relatives and those who fought for that initial freedom, and also then while the West supplied Saddam Hussein with weapons during the war with Iraq, resulting in the deaths of a million? Certainly, there are millions within your country who are happy with the way they are ruled: otherwise no one would have voted for Ahmadinejad, or his even more conservative opponent. This will lead to fissure and disputes, almost certainly within your own families.

Yet the reward which you can now potentially acquire is worth both enduring the above and the lives of those who will fall and have already fallen in pursuit of the freedom you want. Some of you will wonder whether Ayatollah Khamenei's unprecendented offer of a inquiry into the vote is worth waiting for. You have now though a similarly unprecendented opportunity: the government is uncertain of how to react, even as reports come in of the shootings in the middle of the night. You may not have this chance again for years. Whether you want simply Mousavi to be president, or for this to be the end of the theocracy, you need to take to the streets in the same or even higher numbers as today, and stay there until you get what you want. Further action may well be required; you may well have to take arms up to defend yourselves, but you can be safe in the knowledge that the world is watching. It's unlikely now that another Tienanmen could take place: use that to your advantage. And remember, even if despite everything, the authorities win, you carry a new world in your hearts. That is what matters.

With fraternal love,
septicisle.

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6/15/2009 09:15:00 PM | | | links to this post

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