Downstairs, Upstairs

Real News Video: "Dead end for New Labour"

Good analysis on The Real News Network from Leo Panitch. I like his style and he has no pretensions. It's far better than what you'd hear on PBS or NPR or read in the US corporate media.

"Labour Party will have to split before it can be renewed":

Craig Murray speaks about torture

Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, gave evidence yesterday on torture before the UK Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights. It's not been covered in the US and has received scant reporting in the UK press. So, I'm attempting to spread the word. From Mr Murray's blog:

Nobody Can Hear You Scream

Just before I gave my evidence to Parliament yesterday, my sister Celia telephoned me to say that I would be speaking not for myself but for all those thousands who had suffered unspeakable torture around the World in the War on Terror, whose screams and sometimes death rattles were heard only by their torturers. She told me I was speaking for those who could not speak.

She put me into a calm place, and I tried to give my evidence very coolly and professionally, but I believe I did manage once or twice to break through the twisted legalese in which the committee have mummified themselves, to bring home the human cost of torture to them.

You can see my evidence here:
http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/VideoPlayer.aspx?meetingId=3978

If that disappears, Tony has kindly put it onto YouTube which you can find here:
http://tenpercent.wordpress.com/2009/04/28/craig-murrays-evidence-on-youtube/

But I am completely astonished, and horribly depressed, that there has been almost no mainstream media of this quite sensational information. There has been not one word in any newspaper or on TV. The Today programme on Radio 4 ran a story on it at 6.45am, but did not repeat it.

[...]

I really cannot understand why no newspaper or TV channel has covered what is quite a startling development in a prominent continuing story on the use of torture in the War on Terror.

I had hoped that my evidence yesterday would be a significant step in ending the policy of obtaining intelligence from torture, and of bringing to account the ministers who approved it. But without any sign of public or media interest, the politicians will feel they can safely ignore the truth I told.

I was trying to speak up for those who have no voice. I feel very strongly that I have let them down.

Only their torturers heard their screams, and hardly anybody else heard my voice either.

In this case it was the video

From the Guardian: G20 death: 'This might have been swept under the rug' - eyewitness

As he sat down in his office in New York yesterday, the hedge fund manager who filmed the moment a police officer clashed violently with Ian Tomlinson digested the latest revelations.

He has chosen to remain anonymous but has been observing events from across the Atlantic. Informed by the Guardian that the second postmortem had found Mr Tomlinson died not of a heart attack but abdominal haemorrhage, he said he was relieved he had stepped forward as a witness.

"Judging by the short amount of time that lapsed between him being hit and pushed to the ground and him collapsing and dying, it just seemed to be coincidental that it was called a heart attack," he said.

"Now I'm glad I came forward. It's possible Mr Tomlinson's death would have been swept under the rug otherwise. There was nothing except some witnesses speaking to the Guardian saying they saw him being beaten. But it was their statements versus the police. You needed something incontrovertible. In this case it was the video."

THE LESSON OF THIS STORY: Where ever you are (London, New York, Burlington or any of the 'Constitution-Free-Zones' throughout America), if you every see anybody pulled over, harassed (or 'dog handled') by the oinks, stop and observe. And keep the camera rolling.

Photograph: Guardian.co.uk footage of Ian Tomlinson walking past a line of police dog handlers during the G20 protests in London.

BBC's disgraceful performance over Ian Tomlinson killing

Richard Seymour in Lenin's Tomb, April 8, 2009 gives an excellent analysis of the 'independent' BBC coverage surrounding the killing of Ian Tomlinson during the G20 in London.

It is staggering how eager the BBC has been to relegate the killing of a citizen by the police to a non-story, worth only one line in its initial coverage. Whether they were leaned on, or whether they just followed their natural inclinations, they just didn't give a good fuck about this suspicious death. Even when it became clear that the police were lying about protesters obstructing assistance, and that the single anonymous source who said he died of 'natural causes' was probably wrong, there was zilch. Worse, according to Guardian journalist Stephen Moss, when the BBC were offered the latest footage by The Guardian, they were told: "No thanks, we're not covering this, we see it as just a London story." Even now that they are forced to give the issue proper coverage, they don't mention that independent eyewitnesses confirm that Ian Tomlinson was repeatedly attacked by the police moments before the video was shot. That is a significant part of the story to just leave out. Neither do they mention that this kind of assault was part of a sequence of attacks on entirely innocent people, which the police take for granted as their right. At every stage, the BBC's performance has been a disgrace. Ian Tomlinson's family are rightly demanding justice. They might also want to ask why a supposedly public service broadcaster exhibited such callous indifference to Mr Tomlinson's death.

MURDER AT THE G20

I'm spreading the word about the murder of Ian Tomlinson - his tragic death was not accidental and not by natural causes - last week during the G20 summit in London. The police lied to cover this up.

Via Ten Percent,

Dramatic footage obtained by the Guardian shows that the man who died at last week’s G20 protests in London was attacked from behind and thrown to the ground by a baton–wielding police officer in riot gear.

Moments after the assault on Ian Tomlinson was captured on video, he suffered a heart attack and died.

Video & more @ The Guardian:

The film reveals that as he walks, with his hands in his pockets, he does not speak to the police or offer any resistance.

A phalanx of officers, some with dogs and some in riot gear, are close behind him and try to urge him forward.

A Metropolitan police officer appears to strike him with a baton, hitting him from behind on his upper thigh.

Moments later, the same policeman rushes forward and, using both hands, pushes Tomlinson in the back and sends him flying to the ground, where he remonstrates with police who stand back, leaving bystanders to help him to his feet.

The man who shot the footage, a fund manager from New York who was in London on business, said: "The primary reason for me coming forward is that it was clear the family were not getting any answers."

LABEL: UNINTENTIONAL HUMOUR

For your immediate reflection, from the Guardian - "Is the recession David Bowie's fault?":- Who is to blame for the recession? Forget all that stuff about out-of-control bankers, negligent governments and sleepwalking regulators; instead, according to the BBC's Evan Davis, it's time to point the finger at David Bowie - a pioneer not only of experimental rock music and what used to be called "gender bending", but exactly the kind of financial sophistry that got us in this mess.

In yesterday's Daily Mirror, Davis laid out his theory as follows. In 1997, Bowie needed millions of pounds to buy back the rights to his songs from a previous manager. With the help of a financier named David Pullman, he thus created the so-called "Bowie Bond", through which investors would receive a share of the royalties from 287 Bowie songs over the next 10 years (£55m worth of them were sold to the Prudential Insurance Company).

THE SILENCING OF DISSENT II

The Independent has pulled Mark Steel's column this week. Here it is (thanks to Ten Percent):-WHERE’S MY COLUMN GONE?

Given that it takes me several months to collect together the documents needed to get my car tax, I’m amazed that anyone manages to assemble the hundreds of bits required to produce a newspaper every single day. Then something happens, such as John Updike dies, and the newspaper gets someone to write something about him, and right in the space where my own column was destined to appear. Couldn’t he have hung on for a few more hours and buggered up someone the following day? So, for anyone pining, this is what would have appeared had it not been for John Updike’s genuinely untimely death.

The BBC are right. If they broadcast that appeal for food and medicine to be sent to Gaza it WOULD be taking sides. The Israeli Defence force could legitimately say “We’ve gone to enormous lengths here to kill people, then you go and help to keep them alive. How do you square that with your remit to be neutral?”

So the BBC needs to look at other areas in which its ‘impartiality’ could be called into question. To start with they’ll have to scrap ‘Crimewatch’, which clearly takes the side of the murdered against the interests of murderers. Maybe they could get round this by having a new balanced Crimewatch, in which the police plea for witnesses to a crime, but then the presenter says “Next tonight - have you seen this man? Because Big Teddy and his gang are desperate to track him down and do him in for ringing us up earlier. So if you have any information please call us, where Nobby the Knife is ready to talk to you in complete confidence.”

It’s impossible to be entirely neutral about anything, especially with an appeal for money. Appeals are made for injured veterans of the Second World War, but I don’t suppose they’d take them off air if they got a letter to Points of View saying “Dear BBC, I’m a Nazi war criminal but I pay my license fee just like everyone else, and as such I was appalled by the biased images of the Battle of Normandy used to promote your financial appeal. There are two sides to every story you know, and I thought you had a promise to be impartial. So come on BBC, us Kommandants watch television as well!”

Appeals have been made for victims of wars in the Congo, Darfur and Bosnia, keeping people alive and thereby undermining the aims and efforts of the armies who tried to wipe them out. But if the current stance carries on, from now on if anyone feels their block of flats collapsing on them they’ll think “I hope this is an earthquake and not an invading army or we won’t get a penny via the BBC.”

Aware of the frail logic of not showing the appeal, the BBC have made some even stranger statements to justify their decision, such as claiming they couldn’t be sure the money would ‘get through’. Ah yes that must be it. If only Gaza was like the Congo or Darfur, where the Red Cross can pop along to the village cashpoint machines, draw the money out and get Janjaweed or Hutu militias to help them search for two-for-one bargains in the local Somerfields.

Luckily for the Middle-East, the American government has been less squeamish about this question of impartiality. For example in Bush’s last year he sent Israel 2.2 billion dollars worth of military aid, and there’s no record of anyone saying “This couldn’t be seen as breaching our impartiality in any way, could it?”

The problem is that when viewers are confronted with scenes of misery and destruction, they’re bound to ask what or who caused this, and if it was done deliberately. So the BBC couldn’t remain neutral. Either they allowed the appeal that would lead to those questions being asked, or they refused it, in which case they’re suggesting they shouldn’t aid the relief of civilians who’ve been bombed, starved and slaughtered, as on this occasion their plight can be justified. And it’s decided this time to be biased not towards the impoverished but towards the impoverishers.

Or maybe they’ve been under such a barrage of complaints lately they just panicked that in the middle of the appeal the presenter might say, “Oh and by the way, I shagged David Attenborough’s grandson. Anyway, back to the lack of clean water.”

TWO GOOD READS

TWO writer/bloggers I admire have written essays recently in well-known publications in their respective countries.

Richard Seymour (Lenin's Tomb and author of the Liberal Defence of Murder), is at last on the Guardian's CiF: Obama the imperialist

I'd read Michael Colby's on his blog last week; it was featured on Counterpunch the day after the inauguration: Ready. Aim. Organize.

THIS IS THE AD THE BEEB WOULDN'T LET BRITISH TELEVISION VIEWERS WATCH

Some further background to this story.

BBC OCCUPIED OVER CRAVEN NON-BROADCAST OF GAZA AID APPEAL

Good on those Glaswegians!

CBS News

Members of a British anti-war group occupied the Glasgow offices of the BBC on Sunday, saying they would stay in the building until the national broadcaster agrees to air a charity fundraising appeal for Palestinians in the Gaza strip.

The occupation followed criticism from lawmakers and religious leaders who said the BBC's decision not to air an advertisement from the Disasters Emergency Committee - a group of charities that includes the Red Cross, Oxfam, and Save the Children - was wrong.

Lenin's Tomb has more on the sit-in (look in the comments for first hand accounts from protesters).

The ABC has criticised the BBC refusal, too.

PRINCE HARRY, AGAIN

In a British army recruitment video made three years ago, in additon to showing his racism, Mr Wales also admits his pubes are ginger.

GUARDIAN AMERICA

Today, it was announced that the Guardian has launched a new US-based newspaper - Guardian America. I'll just have a wait-and-see attitude about this foray into America. Personally, I'm pleased the new paper will adhere to the same style book as the UK version.

Concert for Diana

A concert for Diana, Princess of Wales, is planned for Sunday, July 1 in London. Isn't she dead, yet?

Clearly the Wembley concert is just an excuse for Harry and Wills to throw an extravagant shindig. And we all know that's right up Elton John's alley...

Come to think of it, half the aristocracy have been up Elton's alley.

Propaganda as an 'Exclusive'

UPDATE @ 2:45 pm - Tisdall and the Guardian are taking unanimous criticism on the Guardian's own pages for this story.

Juan Cole has a few comments, too (once you link to it, scroll down a bit) - I suppose I have to link to this silly article by poor Simon Tisdall in of all places, The Guardian, whom someone is using to push a sinister agenda. (...) It really is discouraging that Tisdall didn't report instead on what crazy things the US military spokesmen in Iraq told him. US military spokesmen have been trying to push implausible articles about Shiite Iran supporting Sunni insurgents for a couple of years now, and with virtually the sole exception of the New York Times, no one in the journalistic community has taken these wild charges seriously. But The Guardian?

Oh, then there's this (another Exclusive - but it's been all over the lefty blogs, too): Patrick Cockburn in The Independent -
Secret US plot to kill Al-Sadr

I dunno, I wonder if Tisdall is trying to counter-trump the fall out from the Cockburn report.


My earlier post this morning @ 9:18 am:

When I read this story this morning in the Guardian, I nearly spilled my tea all over my laptop - Iran's secret plan for summer offensive to force US out of Iraq

How can a so-called left-liberal newspaper print this US right wing crap? It's just a c/p job from the DoD. The Guardian is to print media what NPR is to radio: a national propaganda machine.

Right after I read the story, I did my daily check in over at the Tomb - How could one persuade The Guardian to produce a lengthy front-page 'exclusive' based on nothing but propaganda from an unnamed US official, with no proof, and nothing but 'US officials say' all over the place?

Warrior Royals

Prince Henry of Wales won't be going to Iraq. Good reason to bring the rest of 'em home now, you'd think.













The government has other reasons. Why give him the celebrity treatment? I've never understood why, in 2007, the royals still train their children to be military warriors. Just imagine if Harry had spoken out against this immoral and illegal war. (As if...) The royals are too tied in with the Establishment, which has given Harry excuses before, when he's played soldier of a
different sort.

It is hard enough luck being a monarch, without being a target also.
- More Maxims of Mark, Johnson, 1927

There are shams and shams; there are frauds and frauds, but the transparentest of all is the sceptered one. We see monarchs meet and go through solemn ceremonies, farces, with straight countenances; but it is not possible to imagine them meeting in private and not laughing in each other's faces.
- Mark Twain's Notebook


I wish I might live fifty years longer; I believe I should see the thrones of Europe selling at auction for old iron. I believe I should really see the end of what is surely the grotesquest of all the swindles ever invented by man-- monarchy.
- [Mark Twain] Letter to Sylvester Baxter of Boston Herald, 1889



Strip the human race, absolutely naked, and it would be a real democracy. But the introduction of even a rag of tiger skin, or a cow tail, could make a badge of distinction and be the beginning of a monarchy.
- Mark Twain's Notebook




Monarchy has speech, and by it has been able to persuade man that it differs somehow from the rattlesnake, has something valuable about it somewhere, something worth preserving, something even good and high and fine, when properly "modified," something entitling it to protection from the club of the first comer who catches it out of its hole.
- Mark Twain - unpublished letter on the Czar, 1890

Virginia Tech/Cho Media Frenzy: Some Reactions

I don't have television, but this past week, I've had access to one. The media frenzy surrounding the shootings in Blacksburg has been relentless. The other day I was in my car, switched on the AM radio and heard some talk radio programme pundit ranting about the shootings. Students at colleges and universities should be allowed to possess guns to defend themselves, the speaker said. Defense against what? I wondered. Then I realised I was listening to Bill O'Reilly's Radiofactor show. I read that another right wing nutjob had pretty much said the same thing: Fight Back! Fight back against whom? There was even some other whacko blaming Va. Tech - they teach students to be wusses. And one even wished the killer had been a Muslim terrorist. Murdoch's rightwing Weekend Australia calls Cho a 'jihadist without a cause'.

Consider Lenin's Tomb's answer to the racist and Islamophobic accusations: If only he'd been a Muslim.

This is a good article and takes the right wing nutzos to task: Marina Hyde in The Guardian: Still, the investigation continues, and one can only marvel at the speed with which 32 corpses - or 33, depending on the perimeters of your humanity - have been made standard bearers for every principle out there. Do let's count NBC's ratings as a principle.

And while you're at it, left i on the news, right after the shootings: More than 30 people are dead from a shooting at Virginia Tech. Words like horrendous, carnage, horrifying, tragedy, shock, are all being used, and rightfully so. Let me be the first (?) to display what some will undoubtedly call my insensitivity and point out that in Iraq, a country with less than one-tenth the population of the United States, this type of horrifying act has happened nearly every day since the United States and its partners invaded that unfortunate country four years ago. Every human tragedy that is happening in Virginia today, every parent that has lost a child, every person that has lost a spouse, every person that has lost a good friend, is repeated every day in Iraq. Every day. The scale of human tragedy taking place in Iraq is so great that it's all too easy to lose sight of it. Multiply what is happening today in Virginia by 25,000 (!!!) or so and you'll have some idea of its scale.

Bishop blocks gay youth worker's job

Successful applicant claims his appointment was then rescinded because of his sexuality

Anushka Asthana The Observer Sunday April 1, 2007: Bishop blocks gay youth worker's job -

A leading bishop has fuelled the controversy over the Church of England and equality after being accused of refusing to employ a youth worker because he is gay.[...] Anni Holden, a spokeswoman for the Diocese of Hereford, said: 'We expect the same sexual standards of behaviour from our support ministers or lay ministers as we do of clergy.'

Continue reading "Bishop blocks gay youth worker's job..."

Relatedly, +Rowan: "Church must be a 'safe place' for gays"

MadPriest: Prudish Priddis Proves Episcopal Prejudice

Changing Attitude

Unity over integrity

From today's Guardian leader -

Compromise is often necessary and rarely glorious; but the outcome of the meeting of Anglican primates, which has just ended in Tanzania, does not even have the merit of balance.[...I]n the face of all the challenges facing humankind, not least in Africa, primates spent five days obsessing about their attitude to gay sex. Religion and homosexuality have long enjoyed a close, if covert, relationship, but while much of the modern world has come to adopt an approach that supports an open understanding of gay and lesbian people, Anglicanism seems to have retreated from it.

Why should I stay in this farce? I'm a cradle Episcopalian. I'm also gay. It's not simple, but I choose to remain in the Episcopal Church to bear witness to the love of God and the inclusive gospel of Jesus Christ. I try to think of other liturgical, sacramental churches I could attend, and then I realise the rest are even worse off than TEC.

After the bombshell yesterday from Dar es Salaam, I read Libby Purves with my morning Whittard. I didn't know Ms Purves wrote for a Murdoch paper. I've been delighted for years by her broadcasts on BBC R4. She's just the kind of person who'd have sat down with the dinnerladies at my school, after the washing-up. --

Pray lift your eyes above the belt
The Churches’ sexual obsession makes me despair

At the conclusion of her commentary, she writes --

Let the Churches concentrate on condemning promiscuity, infidelity, exploitation, predation — whether gay or straight. Nobody asks them to go the full Gay Pride, bathhouse-culture route; but let them recognise kindness and mutual support as virtues, and bless all honest unions. Let them condemn proselytising from either side, making it clear that there is nothing cool or clever about random sexual tourism, any more than there is anything evil in being born gay. It just happens. Being gay can, without doing any violence to the Gospels, be accepted as a potential route to holiness.

It won’t be. They’ll squabble and fudge and cling to their hierarchies and their terrors, and some will scuttle to Rome and Rome will feel smug. And the rest of society will sigh and turn away, thinking that Christianity has nothing to offer.

She's a keeper alright. Three cheers for Libby. Go gurl!