As ’11 comes to a close, Reporters Without Borders‘ December report includes the following table for the year to date:
| PRESS FREEDOM BAROMETER |
59 Journalists killed |
169 Journalists imprisoned |
127 Netizens imprisoned |
|---|
The green elements of the above table are ‘hot’ and link directly to Reporters Without Borders, (http://en.rsf.org/).
Terry Jones, (he of Monty Python), the Guardian 6 Dec 2011.
his full article at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/06/iran-war-drums-terry-jones
Reuters breaking that former Massachusetts governor and Fear Trade presidential hopeful, Mit Romney, spent $100k to “hide records.”
Albums featuring Barry Manilow, The Smurfs and the best of Richard Simmons are among the secret stash.
Leni Reeferstool, Australian Media Director of the Fear Trade, has expressed shock, disappointment and outrage over the award of the Australia Network to incumbent, ABC.
Vee vonted to be moving forwards on a united froont. Look, at the end of the day, thee morkett vill deeliverr thus best outcome. Ze uneeforms ver ready, the luvelee pendants…
Embattled Federal Opposition leader, Tony Abbott, has echoed Reeferstool’s concerns:
It’s, umm, it’s about choice. A free market of ideas. Quite frankly, it’s an outrage. Our footprint moving forwards, is at the end of the day, an index of our liberties, our freedom as consumers. The vision and sheer insight of luminaries of the likes of Ben Harridan, Ms Reeferstool…it u, it’s…a sad day for freedom, for cho….
“I was there to take down the names of people who were arrested… As I’m standing there, some African-American woman goes up to a police officer and says, ‘I need to get in. My daughter’s there. I want to know if she’s OK.’ And he said, ‘Move on, lady.’ And they kept pushing with their sticks, pushing back. And she was crying. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, he throws her to the ground and starts hitting her in the head,” says Smith. “I walk over, and I say, ‘Look, cuff her if she’s done something, but you don’t need to do that.’ And he said, ‘Lady, do you want to get arrested?’ And I said, ‘Do you see my hat? I’m here as a legal observer.’ He said, ‘You want to get arrested?’ And he pushed me up against the wall.”
Retired New York Supreme Court Judge, Karen Smith, who worked as a legal observer Tuesday morning (22/11/11) in New York after the police raided the Occupy Wall Street encampment, as reported by Democracy Now, the US’s largest community media initiative (not for profit and hot linked on our interpretOr blogroll).
One only had to watch SBS or ABC news last night (Thurs) to glean further evidence in support of Norm Stamper’s credible and concrete concerns…
Embattled Federal Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, has today made a dramatic plea, reversing his earlier mantra. He is very concerned about the “well founded fear of persecution” that characterises the plight of the cream of the world’s elite sailors:
“Look, at the end of the day, umm, quite frankly, just don’t stop the boats.”
Echoing his call are organisers of the World “don’t stop the boats” championships (that are not really going to be held in Fremantle), but the brash, new port city of Perth. Sponsors and supporters of the World “don’t stop the boats” championships include ratings’ agencies Poor Standards, Mooody’s and Filth.
Meanwhile in other news, Australian icon, legend and World Knitting champion, Greg Normal, has announced a smashing new sponsorship deal with prestige watch brand ‘Red Dot: depuis 1988’, and there are hopes that he may have the opportunity to defend his title at the Malcolm Day Stadium in Kwinana, early 2012…
The argument about fracking and its impact on water, environmental and health matters is very important but it is obscuring a greater issue for this country and indeed the world.
State governments on the East coast are arguing that hydraulic fracturing to extract gas is vital for future development, as the Bass Strait oil and gas fields are reaching the end of their lives and their will be a shortage in supply in the near future. However, allowing fracking will have little impact on state supplies because the private companies drilling for gas sell their gas to the world market as quickly as they can to maximise their profits. They will not eke it out or save it for state governments unless they pay upfront.
In fact the declining Bass Strait oilfields show that a new approach is needed to ensure that we do have dedicated energy supplies for our industries, for transport and households to use until such time we can replace them with renewables or other new forms of energy at competitive prices.
After urging from the Greens, who called for the implementation of a comprehensive strategic energy use policy,the Carpenter Government in Western Australia put in place a weak arrangement guaranteeing state supply for households and industry. I have not seen any evidence of any other state governments securing their states energy futures and lots of evidence that what they actually want is the mining royalties to prop up their current budgets.
Rapidly selling our energy supplies at the current rate may make our governments look like good financial managers, but it is a sleight of hand trick digging up money in the form of hydrocarbons and swapping it for paper money. The longer the oil and gas sits in the ground, the more valuable it becomes. The quicker we dig it up the less we will get to sell it. What point is the quick buck now if in twenty years down the track we have not secured energy supplies for local use? What manufacturing, farming and transport or even mining will be possible?
The Chinese are not so stupid with their energy supplies. Rather than using up local gas and oil, they are buying up energy all over the globe at very good prices and keeping their reserves as reserves.
There are some other stupendous challenges as well and the most pressing is food production. It has been estimated that the current world population of 6 billion has only been possible because of the use of nitrogenous fertilisers. Without nitrogenous fertilisers the highest population achievable is around 3 billion people and most of the added nitrogen comes from a process using natural gas.
By 2050 when world population reaches around 9 billion, our gas supplies will be dwindling and highly expensive. Six billion people will be facing starvation if natural gas is not available or affordable to make nitrogenous fertilisers. If you think we are currently seeing market failures, wait till 2050 arrives and we are without adequate oil and gas supplies for our survival. It is an act of criminal stupidity of our governments to not deal with these issues now because they continue to hold to a fundamental and religious belief that the market will fix it. Now is time for action not for waiting on Godot.
French news service AFP (Agence France Presse) are today reporting that artist Ai Weiwei has been buoyed by ‘a huge wave of solidarity’ involving 30,000 other Chinese people raising 8.5 milion Yuan to support his very fragile predicament. This is a situation whereby freedom of expression in contemporary China is the core issue.
In addition to his thought provoking and magnificent art, Ai Weiwei had investigated the needless deaths of school children who died in shonkily built schools that had collapsed in earthquakes of recent years. Icon of art became enemy of the state. Consume away, if you can, but whatever you do, don’t question…
In cognitive psychology, dichotic listening is a procedure commonly used to investigate selective attention in the auditory system. In dichotic listening, two different auditory stimuli (usually speech) are presented to the participant simultaneously, one to each ear, normally using a set of headphones. Participants are asked to attend to one or (in a divided-attention experiment) both of the messages. They may later be asked about the content of either message….
Page 1 of the Weekend Australian (12-13 Nov ’11) had leads from the paper’s foreign editor, Greg Sheridan, and political editor, Denis Shanahan. The messages were mixed and perhaps even ‘dichotic’:
Have your say on our poll below…
Alleged mafia boss, Jimmy ‘baldy-capra-baddy’ Murdoch, broke his vow of Omerta at yesterday’s Commons select committee hearing into phone-hacking and related venal shennanigans.
An unusually emotional Jimmy ‘baldy-capra-baddy’ Murdoch, blurted out:
“OK, ok, ok, – derr waz one lone hacker. Weee paid heem deee moneez and hee hack dee pheunes.”
Attributing his ‘lone hacker’ theory to economising and his “buesineszzs educaion ” (sic), baldy-capra-baddy’ defended this position, despite substantial evidence to the contrary.
News has just come in that reveals why Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlustonni was forced to resign. He has been snubbed by IMF officials. Mr Berlustonni had invited leading IMF figures to one of his famous Bunga Bunga parties but after looking around at what Silvio had provided, the executives after a brief animated discussion with Mr Berlustonni left in a huff.
When asked what had caused their departure, Silvio told the press pack that he had mistaken their purpose. “I thought they were on the same wavelength as me as I thought IMF stood for Immature Maiden Fanciers but I had underestimated them”, he said. “In fact they wanted to see much more pain and suffering. They wanted people tied down for long periods and punished. Why was I not told their initials mean Interminable Masochistic Fetishists. This totally demoralised me and left me feeling impotent and unable to keep on screwing Italy as I had in the past.”
The interpretOr’s London media sources confirming that Culture, Media and Sport select committee of the House of Commons (UK) recalling James Murdoch amid revelations from jailed former News of the World Royal Editor, Clive Goodman, that “hacking widely discussed” at the paper from 2007 onwards.
“This practice (illegal phone hacking) was widely discussed in the daily editorial conference…”
Adding to the context of this second Common’s appearance for James Murdoch are the additional revelations of the surveilance of lawyers acting for phone hacking victims of News International‘s now defunct News of the World. In addition, as reported previously @ the interpretOr (18th Aug 2011), the Culture, Media and Sport select committee of the House of Commons are also aware of the following…
Italian clown and children’s entertainer, ‘Silvio’, was again in the spotlight yesterday. Following on from his recent revival of dadaist piece, ‘Bling, Bling’, he has been presented with the final tab for his notorious ‘wonga-wOnga’ parties and it’s reportedly even larger than his ego.
BBC WorldService carried a report this weekend of a final party tab of US$2,000,000,000,000 – errr, that’s $2 TRILLION.
There’s breaking news of tens of thousands of demonstrators taking to the streets of Rome this Sunday morning:
Deutche Welle : http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15513611,00.html
Silvio’s wOnga buddies, an elusive group known as ‘CRAPA’ – covert ratings’ agency party arseholes – were unavailable for comment.
With his orange tan fading to a more golden hue, noted Italian clown and children’s entertainer, ‘Silvio’, was again in the spotlight yesterday.
As the G20 wrapped up in Cannes, ‘Silvio’ entertained onlookers with a rare return to street performance! As delighted fans gathered ‘al fresco’, he relished in reviving his dadaist masterpiece ‘Bling, Bling’. With its’ existential themes and imagery, comparisons have been made with Godot…
A clearly delighted ‘Silvio’ also quoted an extract from ‘Bling’ to the throng of media:
“I’ve dreamed all my life of making these reforms to the economy, but it hasn’t been possible because of the socialists and communists,”
(‘Silvio’ 4 nOv, 2011)
His revival of ‘Bling, Bling’ is proudly sponsored by Goldmen Sucks and the ratings agency Poor Standards.
(more @ earlier post: ratings agencies busted: pOlice have raided S&P and Moody’s Milan offices )
Today’s Australian carries a front page exclusive: ‘Morale crisis on asylum patrol boats’.
The opening paragraph alone contains the following:
Australian philanthropist, philosopher and social scientist, James Packer, has begun a series of public interest lectures on the perils of drinking coffee.
Of particular concern to him, is the growing evidence of a causal relationship between “latte drinking” and an aversion to ‘pOkie’ machines.
Public welfare groups, including the IPA and CofC, have also expressed concern that an aversion to pOkie machines represents a significant and disturbing trend, with implications for the health of the nation.
Professor David Trousers, of Melbourne’s IOT (Institute of Orange Tanning), has cited fresh evidence that pOkie deficiencies among coffee drinkers are seeing increasing numbers of latte sippers “spontaneously disappearing” to other planets…
a suspect "other planet"... ...coffee drinkers be warned.
Reuters reporting that Goldman Sachs posted Q3 (US) loss of circa US$450…Lloyd Blankcheque will probably still get a gigantic bonus regardless.
From ‘big swinging dick’ to flaccid ****er…
plus see earlier interpretOr piece: called to accOunt? Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blank(cheque)fein hires top defense lawyer
Doubt has been cast upon the status of entertainer, Andy Bolt’s humanity. Speculation of the last few days has raised fresh concerns that he may in fact be other than fully human. Despite superficial appearances, questions remain unanswered as to whether Bolt is fully or only partially human.
The suspicions that he is perhaps just pretending to be human cease to go away…
The Media inquiry proposed by Stephen Conroy looks increasingly like it is going to be a fizzog. Conroy has said he wasn’t going to inquire into media ownership as he already knew Murdoch owned 70% of Australian media and he suggested that it didn’t matter because that is the way it has been for twenty years.
Well I am glad that Senator Conroy doesn’t care that one company, indeed one man can control information all over the world and have such power that politicians fall into line with his wishes to the detriment of the citizens. Furthermore they turn a blind eye to his newspapers being involved in misinformation on a massive scale on matters of extreme importance.
Democracy cannot survive in countries where those who control information give us lies and propaganda instead of truth. How can we judge elected representatives if our judgement is based on misinformation? How can we trust politicians who have to placate media tycoons if they want to gain the seat of government?
The fourth estate has gone beyond its charter to become a quasi-level of government which bashes the elected representatives into submission to the detriment of the broader community. George Orwell was wrong about Big Brother being a government bureaucracy; it is more likely to be a huge corporation.
Each passing day our newspapers become more like paper versions of Fox News and our democratic process is pushed further into jeopardy. Fox has become the champion of extremist politicians, Muslim bashing, government hatred, character assassination and science denial. Recent studies show that Fox viewers are the most ignorant viewers in America and that the more they watch Fox the more misinformed they become. Our only national broadsheet, The Australian, is well on the way down the same path. The media monopoly must be addressed now.
John Hartigan should reveal to the Australian public what the deal was done between Julia Gillard and the Murdoch media referred to on page two of the Weekend Australian. ” This has broken the deal we had”. Was this deal in the interest of the Australian public or was it a deal that protected the interest of Murdoch media from public scrutiny?
If Hartigan was promised protection from any parliamentary inquiry then we are in the same position as the appalling situation in the United Kingdom where the boundaries between police, parliament and the press have been eroded by bribery and quid pro quo arrangements that allowed criminality by the media to go unchecked.
The Guardian and Vogue just breaking news that Tony Blair, whilst a serving British Prime Minister, became god father to Rupert’s Murdoch’s youngest daughter. Separation of powers, anyone?
So much for the Fourth Estate.
Why this is a matter of PUBLIC INTEREST:
The following is an extract from Andrew Rawnsley’s ‘The End of the Party’. As associate editor and chief political commentator of the Observer (London broadsheet), he details the key components of how Blair contrived and sold the dodgy dossier re alleged Iraq WMD in September 2002:
“The intelligence chiefs had succumbed to the frenzied and insidious pressure from the Prime Minister and his senior staff to deliver the goods. The propagandist Campbell supervised the spinning of thin, dated and flaky material to make the threat look real, new and urgent. The lawyer Blair then further buried all the caveats and uncertainties to present the dossier with his trademark evangelical certainty. Then pro-war elements of the media inflated the claims into the scariest headlines they could contrive.”
(The End of the Party, A Rawnsley, Viking Penguin, 2010)
Bliar’s dossier – selling and spinning phantom WMD
As posted previously in the interpretOr, last Christmas, British Prime Minister David Cameron had a festive lunch at the home of Rebekah Brooks, also in attendance was her then boss, James Murdoch…oh, and Elisabeth Murdoch and Matthew Freud too. Cosy…
the interpretOr… top global Google result for ‘Cameron’s Christmas lunch‘
Journalists of the Murdoch stable have scornfully denounced those who have suggested that “The Australian” is biased against the Gillard Government or who said it was campaigning against the government on climate change issues in an untruthful and unscientific manner. They proclaimed the editorial independence of each Murdoch paper.
For many of us the proof is in the pudding. For instance in an edition of the “Sunday Times” in which a political journalist claimed that there was no bias on climate change, the front page of the same edition carried an attack on Cate Blanchette for her stance on climate change identical to the story found in The Australian newspaper. And universally the Murdoch media relentlessly used and reused the same nasty and inaccurate name “Carbon Cate” to undermine the credibility of her message. Can’t the “independent” Murdoch sub editors make up their own childish and nasty names? I have also read many articles like Brendan O’Neill’s beat up in today’s Weekend Australian stoutly defending climate sceptics against slurs by climate change acceptors but can’t remember any recent articles siding with the dominant scientific position of climate scientists.
And I don’t suppose the many articles in the same edition beating up on Julia Gillard and quoting unrevealed Labor sources calling for her to be dumped, being juxtaposed against the gaggle of positive stories about Tony Abbott means that the paper is unbalanced. Not even Greg Sheridan’s gushing article “Abbott Has Right Stuff to Master The World” would indicate a bias would it? By the way Greg I think a more accurate header would be “Abbot Has Credentials to Stuff up The World”
Murdoch media has a worldwide reputation for bias and tattiness and a study by the University of Maryland revealed that ignorance of Fox viewers actually increases the longer they watch the network. Furthermore, according to recent polls, Fox News viewers are the most misinformed of all news consumers in the USA. They are 12 percentage points more likely to believe the stimulus package caused job losses, 17 points more likely to believe Muslims want to establish Sharia law in America, 30 points more likely to say that scientists dispute global warming.
The Australian is fast becoming the broadsheet equivalent of Fox News. Reading it is bad for your sanity.
On 20th August, 2011, the interpretOr published a story concerning the origins of the incongruous friendship between Tony Blair and George W Bush and sourced the majority of the piece from John Kampfner of the New Statesman and other authoritative UK media sources…a Scot named Willy Gammell the mutual childhood friend of both former leaders.
The Gammell family’s Cairn Energy linked with the Bush family back in the 1950’s, and is also closely aligned with Cheney’s Halliburton and the Carlyle Group – all major beneficiaries of the invasion of Iraq. Further investigation by the interpretOr led us to discover that Willy Gammell, (the Bush/Blair mutual childhood friend) has a younger brother, Peter.
This is not conjecture or conspiracy ‘theory’. In addition to John Kampfner of the New Statesman, these associations have been publicly documented by Russ Baker, who has written for The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The Nation, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Village Voice and Esquire and dozens of other major domestic and foreign publications. He has also served as a contributing editor to the Columbia Journalism Review.
Wikipedia: In 2007, Stokes formed a joint venture with The Carlyle Group to acquire the equipment hire group Coates Hire Ltd from National Hire Ltd (over 50% owned by WesTrac).
Our earlier 20th Aug 2011 piece:
“John Kampfner was a political correspondent and commentator for the BBC and Financial Times and is currently Political Editor of the New Statesman. He has exposed the origins of the link and subsequent bond between former Prime Minister Tony Blair, and ex President George W Bush. A young George W Bush spent a summer on the Perthshire (Scotland) family farm of the Gammell family. Young Willy Gammell became a childhood and lifelong friend of George W, oh…and young Willy Gammell was also one of Blair’s closest school friends at the elite Fettes College in Edinburgh.
Truth is indeed stranger than fiction…” Bliar’s incongruous friendship with George W Bush originated in the school playground…
HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA
PLAINTIFF M70/2011 v MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP
PLAINTIFF M106 OF 2011 BY HIS LITIGATION GUARDIAN, PLAINTIFF M70/2011 v MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP
[2011] HCA 32
Today the High Court held invalid the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship’s declaration of Malaysia as a country to which asylum seekers who entered Australia at Christmas Island can be taken for processing of their asylum claims. After an expedited hearing before the Full Bench, the Court by majority made permanent the injunctions that had been granted earlier and restrained the Minister from taking to Malaysia two asylum seekers who arrived at Christmas Island, as part of a larger group, less than four weeks ago.
The Court also decided that an unaccompanied asylum seeker who is under 18 years of age may not lawfully be taken from Australia without the Minister’s written consent under the Immigration (Guardianship of Children) Act 1946 (Cth). The Court granted an injunction restraining the Minister from removing the second plaintiff, an Afghan citizen aged 16, from Australia without that consent.
The Court held that, under s 198A of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth), the Minister cannot validly declare a country (as a country to which asylum seekers can be taken for processing) unless that country is legally bound to meet three criteria. The country must be legally bound by international law or its own domestic law to: provide access for asylum seekers to effective procedures for assessing their need for protection; provide protection for asylum seekers pending determination of their refugee status; and provide protection for persons given refugee status pending their voluntary return to their country of origin or their resettlement in another country. In addition to these criteria, the Migration Act requires that the country meet certain human rights standards in providing that protection.
The Court also held that the Minister has no other power under the Migration Act to remove from Australia asylum seekers whose claims for protection have not been determined. They can only be taken to a country validly declared under s 198A to be a country that provides the access and the protections and meets the standards described above. The general powers of removal of “unlawful non-citizens” given by the Migration Act (in particular s 198) cannot be used when the Migration Act has made specific provision for the taking of asylum seekers who are offshore entry persons and whose claims have not been processed to another country, and has specified particular statutory criteria that the country of removal must meet.
On the facts which the parties had agreed, the Court held that Malaysia is not legally bound to provide the access and protections the Migration Act requires for a valid declaration. Malaysia is not a party to the Refugees Convention or its Protocol. The Arrangement which the Minister
Please direct enquiries to Manager, Public Information Telephone: (02) 6270 6998 Mobile: 0415 144 283 Fax: (02) 6270 6868 Email: enquiries@hcourt.gov.au Website: http://www.hcourt.gov.au
31 August 20112
signed with the Malaysian Minister for Home Affairs on 25 July 2011 said expressly that it was not legally binding. The parties agreed that Malaysia is not legally bound to, and does not, recognise the status of refugee in its domestic law. They agreed that Malaysia does not itself undertake any activities related to the reception, registration, documentation or status determination of asylum seekers and refugees. Rather, the parties agreed, Malaysia permits the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (“UNHCR”) to undertake those activities in Malaysia and allows asylum seekers to remain in Malaysia while UNHCR does so.
The Court emphasised that, in deciding whether the Minister’s declaration of Malaysia was valid, it expressed no view about whether Malaysia in fact meets relevant human rights standards in dealing with asylum seekers or refugees or whether asylum seekers in that country are treated fairly or appropriately. The Court’s decision was based upon the criteria which the Minister must apply before he could make a declaration under s 198A.
That’s an awful lot of time during which an awful lot of toxic debt was marketed to investors under rather awful false pretences, and with a Goldman Sachs seal of approval clenching the deals. Why not just Google Goldman Sachs archive of releases and investment advisories to get a fuller flavour.
Jeff Madrick, Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and former economic correspondent to the New York Times, has recently published a metaanalysis of the origins, historical contexts and characteristics of financial crises.
Similarities abound, as the following quote reveals:
“Throughout history, financial crises have been generally similar to each other. An asset – land, housing, stocks, bonds and so on – rises in price, financial institutions lend to investors to buy more, and prices are driven to unsustainable levels. When the bubble bursts, investors sell assets to repay their loans, and prices fall further, often in panic.”
(Jeff Madrick, The Age of Greed, Alfred A Knopff, New York 2011)
the interpretOr also reveals that prior to the collapse of Lehman’s in 2008, Wall St had made trillions from trading sub-prime mortgages that were based on a giant ‘Ponzi’ scheme. How this was achieved was attributable to ongoing deregulation of the finance sector, tacitly permitting finance houses such as AIG and Countrywide to trade essentially unsecured mortgages to a rapacious sector – the buy-in, or incentive, was that sub-prime mortgages were subject to very high interest rates – these flimsy, high risk/high yield products were sold in bulk, providing massive, short-term and unsustainable earnings.
The ratings agencies, (see earlier interpretOr posts), S&P, Moody’s and Fitch, rated these bulk packages of very risky, partially unsecured mortgages, without elaborating on their inherent risks, weaknesses and unsustainability. European and other banks around the globe, bought into these toxic tranches and the resultant GFC was and is the outcome.
also….http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/_files/Financial_Crisis/FinancialCrisisReport.pdf
John Kampfner was a political correspondent and commentator for the BBC and Financial Times and is currently Political Editor of the New Statesman. He has exposed the origins of the link and subsequent bond between former Prime Minister Tony Blair, and ex President George W Bush. A young George W Bush spent a summer on the Perthshire (Scotland) family farm of the Gammell family. Young Willy Gammell became a childhood and lifelong friend of George W, oh…and young Willy Gammell was also one of Blair’s closest school friends at the elite Fettes College in Edinburgh.
Truth is indeed stranger than fiction…
Wikipedia:
Bill Gammell was born in Edinburgh. His father was an investment banker, invited at an early age to join Edinbugh’s Ivory & Sime (which was started in the late 1800s with the formation of the British Assets Trust.) Gammell attended Edinburgh’s exclusive Fettes College where he was friends and debating partners with future British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The two have remained close friends. After Fettes, Gammell attended the University of Stirling where he obtained a BA in Economics and Accountancy.
Gammell’s father invested in US oil company Bush-Overbey, owned by future US President George H. W. Bush. The two families became friends, with George W. Bush spending the summer at the Gammell’s farm in Scotland. George W. attended Bill Gammell’s wedding in Glasgow in 1983. The two have remained close friends. When George W. Bush assumed the Presidency, both he and Blair reportedly called their mutual friend Gammell to ask his opinion of the other.
Group Human Resources Director
News International
1 Virginia Street
London E198 1HR
March 2, 2007
Dear Mr Cloke,
Re: Notice of termination of employment
I refer to Les Hinton’s letter of February 5 2007 informing me of my dismissal for alleged gross misconduct.
The letter identifies the reason for the dismissal as “recent events”. I take this to mean my plea of guilty to conspiracy to intercept the voicemail messages of three employees of the royal family.
I am appealing against this decision on the following grounds:
i — The decision is perverse in that the actions leading to this criminal charge were carried out with the full knowledge and support of [BLANKED OUT]. Payment for Glen (sic) Mulcaire’s services was arranged by [BLANKED OUT].
ii — The decision is inconsistent, because [BLANKED OUT] and other members of staff were carrying out the same illegal procedures. The prosecution counsel, the counsel for Glen (sic) Mulcaire, and the Judge at the sentencing hearing agreed that other News of the World employees were the clients for Mulcaire’s five solo substantive charges. This practice was widely discussed in the daily editorial conference, until explicit reference to it was banned by the Editor. As far as I am aware, no other member of staff has faced disciplinary action, much less dismissal.
iii — My conviction and imprisonment cannot be the real reason for my dismissal. The legal manager, Tom Crone, attended virtually every meeting of my legal team and was given full access to the Crown Prosecution Service’s evidence files. He, and other senior staff of the paper, had long advance knowledge that I would plead guilty. Despite this, the paper continued to employ me. Throughout my suspension, I was given book serialisations to write and was consulted on several occasions about royal stories they needed to check. The paper continued to employ me for a substantial part of my custodial sentence.
iv — Tom Crone and the editor promised on many occasions that I could come back to a job at the newspaper if I did not implicate the paper or any of its staff in my mitigation plea. I did not, and I expect the paper to honour its promise to me.
v — The dismissal is automatically unfair as the company failed to go through the minimum required statutory dismissal procedures.
Yours sincerely,
Clive Goodman
cc Stuart Kuttner, Managing Editor, News of the World
Les Hinton, Executive Chairman, News International Ltd
The interpretOr’s London media sources confirming that Culture, Media and Sport select committee of the House of Commons (UK) recalling James Murdoch amid revelations from jailed former News of the World Royal Editor, Clive Goodman, that “hacking widely discussed” at the paper from 2007 onwards.
“This practice (illegal phone hacking) was widely discussed in the daily editorial conference…”
Embattled Federal Opposition leader, Tony Abbott, has poured scorn on the ‘link’ between day and night:
“Look, it’s based on a lie. At the end of the day, the people of this country will make up their own minds on the merits of the evidence. Let’s not forget that it’s taken guts and plenty of hard work to establish that day does not necessarily follow night. It’s morally courageous to break away from the Orwellian consensus on this important issue and to speak our own inconvenient truth…”
Mr Abbott also dismissed suggestions of a causal link between his orange tan and the increased volume of uranium mining in Australia: “Inappropriate, scare mongering, at the end of the day, it’s…
…Guantanamo: “nOw open for business”
BBC World Service correspondent in New York, prefacing his piece on plunging markets with a thumbnail of the ratings agencies scene – there are only 3 major players (Standard & Poor’s – S&P, Moody’s and Fitch) and they rate the world’s bonds and derivatives – but omitting an essential piece of information:
Listeners were not told that these same ratings agencies derive their primary, if not sole revenue stream, from the commission that they are paid by the merchant banks and governments that are issuing the bonds that they, the ratings agencies, rate.
Err, herein lies an inherent contradiction – a whopping great, objective conflict of interest. In late 2010, a Eurobond dealer broke away from the conformist consensus of his peers and spoke out against the ratings agencies…
This lone voice had made it onto the BBC World Service and clearly stated that the ratings that these agencies had given toxic Greek, Spanish and Irish sovereign debt were incorrect. He ‘called’ these government bonds as sub-junk trash. He derided the ratings as being as fetid as the subprime ‘miscalculations’ of 2008 and earlier.
Afghan refugee, Arif Ruhani, shared his harrowing story with me in 2009. In April of that year there was a burning boat near Ashmore reef that reignited debate on refugee policy and responses. Then Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, acknowledged that deteriorating conditions, particularly in countries like Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, were causing people to flee their homelands.
Perhaps we need to ask ourselves as human beings, what would it be like for us if we awoke to the armies of the night? What would we do if we were no longer safe due to sporadic acts of violence, murder on our doorstep? What steps would we take to try and survive the carnage? What would we do to protect those that we love? We may find answers to some of these fundamental human questions in Arif’s candid and courageous account:
Arif Ruhani’s story begins in Afghanistan in 2001 when the Taliban seized control of Oruzgan Province. This was not a unified event as Mujahedeen factions were fighting between each other for power and populations were being murdered. His family became homeless and were displaced from village to village.
“We were trying to lead a ‘normal life’ after the Taliban came in to power and then the whole thing changed. The threat to our life was more imminent. They were killing people for no reasons, oppressing people and trying to make everyday life harder and harder. That was causing my family to choose for me to flee Afghanistan.”
The family pooled money for Arif to escape…”there was not even a single office in my area of any international government or organisation. Impossible.” His father made a deal with people smugglers on the ground in Afghanistan. Arif was then taken with a group of people to Pakistan and “from there my journey starts.”
Traveling under a false passport, he flew to Indonesia where he spent three months in hiding before boarding a small boat bound for Australia. Suitable for 20 people, but with 80 on board, the boat’s engines stopped working after 6 hours at sea. It was night and the vessel began taking on water. Two of his friends drowned before reaching land. Arif returned to Jakarta where other Afghan asylum seekers were arrested by Indonesian police. While there, he became aware of the Tampa Affair where in 2001, 400 asylum seekers were picked up from their sinking vessel by the Norwegian container ship Tampa and then refused entry to Australia. He also learned of the Howard Government’s Pacific Solution, which saw those refugees set offshore to places including Nauru.
“We heard the news about the Pacific Solution, about the (Australian) Government trying to stop people coming by boat, but we still had no choice. We couldn’t go back to Afghanistan”
After a month in hiding, he boarded another small boat that was soon intercepted off Christmas Island by a large Australian Customs vessel. Women and children were taken aboard the customs ship, while Arif and many other men were detained aboard their boat for 13 days…
“This was a really difficult part of my journey coming to Australia. We were prisoners. The fishing boat was very cramped. They didn’t allow us to move freely and we were watched the whole time. We even had to wait for permission to go to the toilet…some people that spoke out were then sleep deprived. It was like torture.”
The Australian authorities tried to fix the boat to send it back to Indonesia, but it started leaking and was deemed too dangerous. The remaining passengers were transferred to the customs ship and after two days, they were detained at Christmas Island detention centre, which was still being built at the time. After two months on Christmas Island, they were transferred to Nauru, arriving on December 22, 2001. They were initially interviewed by the Australian Department of Immigration and refused refugee status. Many people were wrongly classified as Pakistani, reportedly due to inept interpreters working for the Australian Government. Arif too was initially classified as Pakistani.
“Many of my friends were sent back to Afghanistan and were killed.”
So began a long period of detention on Nauru that was to last until June 2005. Over this period, Arif and other detainees had no access to telephones or the Internet; in fact, no access to the outside world. Arif estimates that there were over 100 children also in detention, ranging in age from 1 to 17 years old. One young boy was detained on Nauru, his mother had died and he was separated from his father who was in Australia under a Temporary Protection Visa (TPV). After three years, the boy was repatriated with his father.
The detention centre on Nauru was funded and administrated by a body called The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and Chubb were contracted for security. Arif said he and others were told repeatedly by Australian authorities (during the Howard years):
“If you don’t go back to Afghanistan, we will send you back by force.”
“We were living in constant fear of being deported by force”, said Arif. Many detainees arrived on Nauru with chronic PTSD (Post Traumatic stress Disorder), while others also developed other severe psychological problems and had no access to treatment. Hunger strikes were also symptomatic of people’s acute distress.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was finally able to visit detainees an Nauru in 2004. This prompted the Australian Department of Immigration to interview individual detainees – Arif was among 29 Afghan asylum seekers whose cases were rejected. He was told by Australian officials that they had reached a new agreement with the Afghan Government whereby he and other remaining Afghan refugees would be sent back. After an agonising delay, Arif was later told that he would be accepted after all, and gained entry to Australia under a TPV, arriving in June 2005. Under the terms of these visas, refugees were denied the right to travel and there was no right of even temporary family reunion.
Arif was granted permanent residency in 2008 and lives in Perth, where he talks of the relationships he has made with local people:
“I am very thankful to them: they have helped me a lot. I will be thankful to them forever.”
Asked about his experiences and the plight of other refugees, Arif Ruhani said:
“It is very difficult to express how I feel. I would definitely say to anybody who will read this, please, please help these people. These people are putting their lives at risk for a safe life, for peace and for freedom.”
I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.
C21 hereditary tyrant
'If artists betray the social conscience and the basic principles of being human, where does art stand then?' Ai Weiwei
chamber of horrOrs...
jellybellypolies of the very recent past
the interpretOr 