Pressure on Peston and News Corp Counter-Intelligence hacking.

Tom Watson MP, one of the two Labour MPs who have been pushing for greater scrutiny of the phone hacking scandal for years has become the first prominent person to openly call out Robert Peston as a News Corporation patsy.

He is "close friends" with Will Lewis, who was Rebekah Brooks' deputy until she stepped down. He also broke the story the Telegraph sting operation on Vince Cable (the business secretary) had revealed Vince Cable was openly opposed to Rupert Murdoch gaining control of BSkyB. Cable was overseeing the merger at the time , the Telegraph realised what a boon this would be for Murdoch and kept it quiet, Peston broke it and got Cable removed from overseeing it.

He was also at the Chipping Norton set party just hours before the Milly Dowler story broke.

True to form when two prominent ex-News International employees accused James Murdoch of lying in his testimony to the select committee this Tuesday Peston broke the news a low level editor who'd been in his job only six months had been fired.

This lead Watson to attack Peston on Twitter:

Watson accused Peston of being spoon fed stories by News International to distract the public's attention from the more dramatic development about James Murdoch's evidence to parliament.

Watson tweeted: "Why Sun story now @Peston? More spin to deflect Myler/Crone statement? Where's your dignity?"

Peston responded: "@tom_watson Tom, this is an outrageous and untrue allegation."

Watson shot back: "I'm sorry @Peston but you are being spoonfed stories. The Myler statement creates a crisis at NI. You have form. Stop being a patsy."

To which Peston replied: "@tom_watson That is not worthy of a response."

Nice to see Peston is following the standard News Corporation line of pretending there is no crime to answer for.

In addition News Corporation have plumbed yet deeper depths, BBC's Newsnight have accused the News of the World of hacking the phones of three lawyers for phone hacking victims.

11.27pm: Three solicitors representing phone hacking victims were themselves targets of the News of the World, according to Newsnight. They included Mark Lewis, the lawyer for the family of Milly Dowler and Gordon Taylor, the former head of the Professional Footballers' Association. The programme reported that the solicitors were not put under surveillance for the purpose of writing stories about them.

Which strongly implies News Corporation were running counter-intelligence against hacking victims, either trying to find out legal information to undermine the victim's cases or blackmail material to make the lawyers back off. By God these motherfuckers are dirty.

Further developments in the News Corp. crisis.

The Guardian has revealed that in late 2009 and then in late 2010 the Metropolitan Police tried to pressure them away from investigating phone hacking. It is very much worth reiterating that during that specific period Neil Wallis, the now arrested former executive editor of the News of the World was working as an "advisor" to the Metropolitan Police.

The second piece I want to draw your attention to isn't so much a development as a summary of the first ten days. Johnathan Freedland looks at what has happened so far and what the aftermath may be. It raises the very real possibility that as with the credit crunch and the MPs expenses scandals the aftermath of this wont be any real change. Nonetheless though it is a worthwhile summary of the spirit if not the details of what has happened so far. It also points out a very important point it has been easy to miss:

One aspect of this British revolution sets it apart. Normally, people know how they are governed long before any change in the system happens. It did not take the Arab spring to teach the people of the Middle East how they were ruled. But in Britain there has been a degree of shock as the curtain was suddenly pulled back, revealing exactly how Murdoch has operated these last 30-plus years.

A great point that raises a scary question, if you don't know who is oppressing you how can you revolt against them?

A couple of quick stories.

Firstly we need to note that it is a bad week for everyone who breach people's privacy for a living and not just News Corporation employees. MI5, MI6 and GCHQ (the British version of the NSA) are all facing funding cuts and shock horror the Intelligence and Security Committee, a parliamentary committee, wants some oversight over the operational activities of all three services. The article is perhaps most noteworthy however for helping me realise the gulf between myself and the establishment

GCHQ director Iain Lobban also says he is having trouble retaining sufficient numbers of suitably-qualified internet specialists.

"I need some real internet whizzes in order to do cyber," he told the committee.

"They will be working for Microsoft or Google or Amazon or whoever. And I can't compete with their salaries. I can offer them a fantastic mission, but I can't compete with their salaries.

"But I probably have to do better than I am doing at the moment, or else my internet whizzes are not going to stay… and we do have a steady drip, I am afraid .

"Month‑on‑month, we are losing whizzes who'll basically say 'I'm sorry, I am going to take three times the salary and the car and whatever else'."

I didn't think anyone talked like that anymore. Perhaps we can apply to the IMF for a bridge loan so as to damn the tide of Whizz loss?

and Secondly a news bulletin this morning relating to violence at a memorial service for Ahmad Wali Karzai, Afghan president Hamid Karzai's half brother was the straw that broke the camel's back. The article states:

Ahmad Wali Karzai, a controversial but key figure in Nato's battle against the Taliban, was killed by his bodyguard.

Now while it is fair to say that "controversial" has a fairly wide scope in a country as unstable as Afghanistan but it does imply his views prompted disagreement rather than his actions. His actions really should provoke more than controversy given he was a Drug Lord and CIA Asset. But the latter probably explains why anywhere above the fold or the first few paragraphs his nature will and can only be referred to as "controversial".

The Guardian's initial summary of Lord Justice Leveson.

edit: Haha, forgot to mention Lord Justice Leveson has been appointed to head the inquiry into the phone hacking scandal and wider media ethics.

This is just a copy paste from the Guardian liveblog of events. However a lot of this stuff is easy to miss if you're not following it neurotically like I am. Relevant bit I copy pasted from is here

Lord Justice Leveson, who has been put in charge of the hastily-assembled inquiry into phone hacking, is a trusted senior judge who is currently chairman of the Sentencing Council, which draws up guidelines for the courts.
He was lead prosecutor in the case of Rose West, Britain's most prolific female serial killer ...

Leveson was educated at Oxford University and became a barrister in 1970, working out of chambers in Liverpool. He initially practised in northern England across a range of crime, personal injury and commercial work.

He was appointed Queen's Counsel in 1986 and began his climb up the judicial ladder, sitting as a recorder and then a deputy high court judge. As Sir Brian Leveson, he joined the appeal court in 2006.

He has already demonstrated his willingness to engage with broader public debates beyond the confines of the courts. Earlier this year he defended a district judge who had been severely criticised – by the prime minister among others – for imposing only a £50 fine on a man who burnt poppies during an Armistice Day event.

In an interview on BBC radio, Leveson explained: "[The judge] had to balance the insult caused to those who were respecting the two minutes' silence against the right which we all have to express ourselves freely … It depended on the evidence and what he heard."

On his appointment to the Sentencing Council in March 2010, Leveson said: "I am keen to look at ways in which the council can help to inform the public about the practice of sentencing in our courts. I am aware from personal experience that giving people the opportunity to explore and understand the way in which judges approach sentencing can significantly increase their confidence in the criminal justice system."

I don't know nearly enough about the English Judiciary to make a comment on the appointment but given a lot of the people who'll read this are American I will make a few basic points.

1) Because this was decided on last week to be a Judicial inquiry it was always going to be headed by a senior judge. All senior judges are Lords, this is a throwback to Britain's medieval heritage and all that, especially because the House of Lords (the upper chamber of our legislature) is the highest court in the land. So while it may seem elitist it is just a seniority thing. (well seniority in an elitist institution but still)

2)Activist judges don't really exist exist in the UK for various reasons so the guy's willingness to stand up and publicly support a fellow judge is noteworthy.

3)Judges are never elected in the UK (in fact I'm fairly fuzzy on how exactly they are selected) so he isn't likely to be overtly political. However since the British establishment is deeply intertwined with this scandal his impartiality is impossible to assert. That would however be true of all potential appointments.

The Guardian reviews the Metropolitan Police's position.

I was somewhat unsure what was happening regarding the Home Affairs Committee interviewing four senior police officers yesterday. The Guardian has clarified things somewhat.

For reference those police officers were: Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner John Yates, Peter Clarke; a retired Deputy Assistant Commissioner with the Metropolitan Police, Andy Hayman; a retired Assistant Commissioner with the Metropolitan Police and Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers, currently heading Operation Weeting, the ongoing investigation into phone hacking by the News of the World.

Nick Davies who is one of the main Guardian journalists behind their investigation into phone hacking has made a video summing up what happened.

Meanwhile Simon Hoggart further puts the boot in for Andy Hayman.

However it is worth bearing in mind that the man heading up the Home Affairs Committee, Keith Vaz has a fair amount of association with corruption himself.

Sir Hugh Order of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), which in spite of its' name is a wholly private company with no attachment to the state, has also criticised Mr Hayman. One has to assume Sir Hugh and ACPO are bristling at someone else horning in on their undermining people's privacy. and example two

But hey in the midst of all this at least our noble law enforcers are marching against deep cuts to public services. So at least in this we can stand in solidarity with these peo-

We accept that cuts have to be made but we ask that the government acknowledges our unique status.

Oh. So cuts to public services in general are fine, just not to their wages. What a fine bunch the British police are.

Justice for a rape survivor, 20 years later.

This article by Liz Seccuro is deeply disturbing. Unsurprisingly I suppose when rape is being discussed but it isn't just the terrifying nature of a rape itself that disturbs. Just as bad is the college administration's seemingly deliberate obstruction of justice. Why would they for instance lie to her about police jurisdiction? Did they not want bad publicity or was one of the rapist's parents a major donor. When a woman is brave enough to pursue justice and the strains that will put upon her and is still prevented from doing so I think we are forced to take a long hard look at our assumptions about this society being egalitarian.

Adventures in wikipedia bias.

For reasons that are beyond me I decided to look at the wikipedia page for Libertarianism: this page. I noticed that there is no mention of any criticism of Libertarianism nor a link to a page that does cover criticism. I thought this odd because I was sure the page for communism did have such a link, entirely reasonably, its important to know the flaws of every ideology. So I checked the communism page. Yes, theres a whole section dedicated to criticism AND links to other criticism pages.

Not a huge deal, afterall Communism isn't the most popular ideology and different wiki pages have different formats anyway. So I looked at the socialism page (it was linked at the top of the communism page and I'm lazy). Of course Socialism's failings also have their own little section. at this point I stopped and went in a different direction but we'll come back to that. Lets look at other ideologies' pages on wikipedia. Anarchism... no, theres certainly no section and a ctrl + f of the page doesn't turn up anything. Liberalism sort of has a criticism section but not really. Conservatism has no section or links. Fascism, perhaps unsurprisingly, does have a section one in need of expansion no less.

So from a brief sampling of ideology pages it seems the only pages to escape mention of criticism in their summary are Conservatism and Libertarianism. While I readily admit the Liberalism criticism isn't quite the same it is mightly convenient for right wingers only their articles don't directly mention criticism at all.

Anyway, back when I first discovered this I mentioned it to a friend and he jokingly suggested editing the page. I decided to first look at the talk page to see if this was an issue. At the top of the talk page is this:
and absolutely no mention of a criticism section on the talk page. So it seems that wikipedia is a site anyone can edit as long as it doesn't affect right wing interests.

However, while searching the archives of the libertarianism talk page I did find a link to the Criticism of libertarianism page so its nicely well hidden but it does have some good information:

Of particular interest to economists is the "New Zealand Experiment," which began in 1984 when Roger Douglas became Minister of Finance and began radically restructuring the country's economy to fit the libertarian model.[10] Over the next 15 years, New Zealand's economy and social capital faced a steady decline: the youth suicide rate grew sharply into one of the highest in the developed world;[11] the proliferation of food banks increased dramatically;[12] marked increases in violent and other crime were observed;[13] the number of New Zealanders estimated to be living in poverty grew by at least 35% between 1989 and 1992;[14] and health care has been especially hard-hit, leading to a significant deterioration in health standards among working and middle class people.[15] In addition, many of the promised economic benefits of the experiment never materialised.[16]

which is pretty darned damning. You can find it with the footnotes etc here

A good day to bury bad news and Iranian Scientists.

On 9/11 New Labour spin doctor Jo Moore stated it was a "good day to bury bad news" which while an excellent idea in PR thinking it was very bad PR for her (she lost her job) when it became more widely known and the media and political opponents etc voiced hypocritical anger about it.

Personally I think it was a piece of timeless wisdom and it seems I'm not alone in that. With the ongoing Wikileaks diplomatic cable leak US or Israeli (ah but I repeat myself) intelligence officers have seen fit to try and murder two Iranian nuclear scientists with bombs in two separate incidents, succeeding in one case. The current leak provides excellent cover because as I said the documents that have been released take Iran having a nuclear weapons programme for granted and normalises this unproven scenario in the public mind. In which case murdering a scientist, if anyone notices, is easier to justify as necessary to keep the peace in the region or suchlike.

One should also note that Iran has killed none of the Israeli scientists involved in the wholly illegal Israeli nuclear weapons program but no one cares about that.

Le Petit Nicholas and the journalists that wont shut up.

As well as his deeply unpopular pension policies and mini-pogroms French President Nicholas Sarkozy and his government are nursing a couple of major scandals. Firstly there is the Bettencourt affair essentially an allegation that Mr Sarkozy both in his campaign for the presidency and earlier on in his career received illegally large donations from a single donor. Secondly there is the accusation that Mr Sarkozy and others in the UMP (his party) received kickbacks from arms sales to Pakistan in the 90s. Mr Sarkozy and others implicated in these scandals have strenuously asserted their innocence.

Of course Nicholas did what any innocent man slandered and libelled by the media. He set the secret services on them. Oh and also accused journalists of being paedophiles for not revealing secret sources to the government, something which could be construed as a direct threat given the increased monitoring of journalists by the secret services. Further the French government is showing a fondness for the British way of doing things with a number of libel lawsuits threatened (but not yet carried out) against those who are investigating these scandals.

There have also been mysterious burglaries targeting those investigating the aforementioned journalists. Another blow to American Exceptionalism as Europe proves it can do COINTELPRO too.

It would seem that when the Propaganda Model fails supposedly and enlightened and freedom loving "democratic" governments in the west are more than willing to use harsher means to suppress the truth.

UK Police shut down prominent opponent.

Fit Watch used to provide criticism and oversight over FITs (Forward Intelligence Teams) essentially watching the watchers by taking photographs of the police taking photographs of people at protests and suchlike. So as is the way of things they were shut down. The police were able to do so without a court order or anything else.

Dissent and opposition to what the police wants is naughty so just don't do it ok?

A shadowy group offers the UK govt £5 billion and a Tory Lord admits to the house he laundered lots of money for the IRA but this is not news.

Credit to Jonny on this one, he caught it on Reddit and then fact checked it on Hansard (the British government's official records).

The title is not hyperbole, the source of this stunning revelation is a tiny blog: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/11/conspiracy-theories.html and the relevant corroboration by hansard can be found here. I highly recommend you read this stuff but I'll give you a taster quote just in case you're too lazy to click links:

Lord James of Blackheath: Not into my pocket. My biggest terrorist client was the IRA and I am pleased to say that I managed to write off more than £1 billion of its money. I have also had extensive connections with north African terrorists, but that was of a far nastier nature, and I do not want to talk about that because it is still a security issue. I hasten to add that it is no good getting the police in, because I shall immediately call the Bank of England as my defence witness, given that it put me in to deal with these problems.

All credit to Charlie Stross for finding this out. Its good that hes getting a lot of traffic from Reddit but jeez its scary the mainstream media aren't covering this at all.

And now; some Propaganda Model news.

A hagiography was originally a biography of a saint listing all their positive virtues and painting them in the best light possible, subsequently it has come to mean a highly positive portrayal of a person, usually in print.

The propaganda model would suggest that if an event that is negative to US interests occurred and it could not safely be ignored then it will be belittled, diminished and "spun" to lessen its' impact on US policy as much as possible.

The Wikileaks document release last week was just such an event and I betcha can't guess what happened. It is consistently fascinating to me (though unsurprising) that the NYT is held up as an example of extremely liberal journalism when it is such an obvious and blatant establishment supporter. The reasons for things being such is simple and twofold: 1)It is to keep the Overton Window (do note the depressing fact right wing uber shill Glenn Beck has tried to co-opt the term just as he has tried to co-opt Martin Luther King's actions) in the very right wing place it is currently, American political discourse will stay right wing as long as people think what the NYT offer is in any way left wing. 2) To people who want to be left wing and suchlike but aren't that well informed (what with how subservient the US media is and all) will read the NYT and unknowingly consume right wing propaganda.

Glenn Greenwald while at no point referring to the propaganda model (Chomsky is Haraam in American mainsteam political discourse) does a very good job of showing how the reaction to this release of information by Wikileaks is a case study of just how the propaganda model works. Greenwald draws some solace from the fact people are questioning just how in the pentagon's pocket the NYT writers were and I suppose to an extent it is. But if nearly of ample evidence of just how blatantly Burns and his ilk lied about Iraq and Afghanistan is only now drawing some criticism rather than hair teared out outrage it would seem that the Propaganda Model is functioning well enough for the elite and US interests.

Being a convicted criminal not reason enough to stop recieving full pay as police officer

Its seems the Catholic Church isn't the only institution in the UK that feels the law doesn't apply to it. A copper was given six months in prison for assaulting a 57 year old woman in his custody but because hes out on appeal his police force thinks that is reason enough to put him back on full pay. To be fair given police officers are now allowed to kill with impunity and not just once either AND with those who killed innocents even appointed to the Independent Police Complaints Commission one can hardly blame Wiltshire police for thinking there is nothing untoward about keeping paying a police officer who merely grossly abused his power and beat up a middle aged woman.

Wikileaks leader is/isn't/is/isn't/is/isn't...

So Julian Assange has had charges against him dismissed and now re-levelled at him. Sure is convenient how this is running his name through the muck in way more news cycles than a normal investigation would. The truth may well set others free but it seems its likely to get those who reveal it locked up.

War Crimes trial for SS Captain who emptied entire magazine into 13 year old Jewish girl.

Oh wait no, I typoed, turns out an Israeli Captain emptied an entire magazine of his assault rifle into a 13 year old Palestinian girl and then he was found completely innocent by an IDF investigation!

Israel to fight reality's liberal bias.

Two zionist groups have realised wikipedia is full of evidence that Israel's oppression of Palestinians, breaking of international law, war crimes and crimes against humanity on wikipedia making them look bad, which has made them "frustrated" so, they're training up wikipedia editors to "correct" wikipedia. But don't worry kids, they're not going to spread propaganda or anything oh no:

"We don't want to change Wikipedia or turn it into a propaganda arm," says Naftali Bennett, director of the Yesha Council. "We just want to show the other side. People think that Israelis are mean, evil people who only want to hurt Arabs all day."

Controversial options like stopping doing evil things would perhaps work better but just censoring all criticism of Israel seems easier, hell they've already clamped down heavily on media access oh and of course by happy accident the blockade also limits media access and they've blocked aid worker's access to gaza just so the west gets as little info from the Gaza strip as possible. So yeah, why not keep going on the same path.

To finish a chilling and oddly candid announcement they're not simply trying to alter pages to fit their views, they have designs on taking over the community:

"We learned what not to do: don't jump into deep waters immediately, don't be argumentative, realise that there is a semi-democratic community out there, realise how not to get yourself banned," says Yisrael Medad, one of the course participants, from Shiloh.

So look forward to the Holocaust page on wikipedia detailing how the victims of the holocaust were 8 billion jews, a gay person (who was just confused) and a jehvoa's witness oh and the concentration and death camp guards were Palestinians.

A historian you haven't heard of has died.

You haven't heard of this historian because he was an Israeli Jew hebrew speaker who in his youth was part of the Labour Zionist movement, who while remaining a leftist was able to apply critical thinking to its' flaws and the wider failings of the leftist movements in America and Europe from his youth that lead to the rise of neoconservatism. His greatest reason for obscurity though was his well informed and intellectually honest criticism of Israel and calls for a one state policy that lead to him becoming a persona non grata among the US Pro-Israel lobby who ensured the only mentions of him were deeply negative.

Read a sort of obituary for this guy here

How the military deals with soldiers who have a conscience.

An article detailing the various reprisals military people face if they try and alert the media and the wider world to all kinds of absuses and the hollow lie that is the assertion they should've dealt with it through proper channels, the proper channels simply don't care. Rather than the phony silliness that all Troops are heroes, it is, as the article states, these people who risk (and often lose) everything to get the truth out that are the real heroes

A profile of Julian Assange, founder of wikileaks.

The tone of this seems to be leaning towards being too trusting of the official line for my tastes but still its quite interesting to read about his background and what the guy who leaked the Pentagon Papers thinks about all of this. Plus making WANK appear on the screens of NASA is pretty funny.

Also don't miss the fact Obama's administration is even more secretive than Bush's was. Hope and change folks.

edit: link now works!

So American Dad can be pretty cool.

In between the fart jokes Seth Macfarlane does get some pretty good political jabs in, such as the Saudi episode and now this song:



Maybe he deserved being able to touch Eliza Dushku, who knows?