He crawls! He creeps! He says reporters talk “fucking bollocks” live on television! Run, don’t walk (and don’t fall over), because Boris Johnson is…

“The Blob.”

As today’s London Mayoral elections head to the close, it looks like BoJo might be in for another term. According to the latest YouGov polls for the Evening Standard, Boris looks set to hand-off Ken Livingstone by 53-47%. And all this, after a typical series of gaffes, scandals and slip-ups that show how little our Mayor is in touch with the average Londoner, as opposed to the City, NewsCorp and big money.

And yet he is successful. Why? Because – like The Blob, the 1958 teen horror classic in which a interstellar spoonful of rogue strawberry jelly reeks havoc on small-town America – whatever hurts Boris, only seems to make him stronger.

Boris Johnson is indestructible.

Boris is funny, isn’t he? When he falls over, he becomes more like us. When he cusses on telly, you can start to imagine him as the village drunk sat at the bar. And his hair is funny too.

But when a piece of information emerges which is actually damning, personality cult shields him from resignation. Like the 1990 telephone conversation between Johnson and old pal, Darius Guppy, who asks Boris (then a Telegraph journalist in Brussels) to give him a News of the World hack’s details so he can have him beaten up. Boris makes sure the journalist won’t be too badly hurt (he wasn’t in the end), but this still looks like one of the uglier sides of the old boys’ network.

Gaffe after gaffe, scandal after scandal, Boris survives them because of his image as the bumbling, shoulders-hunched, floppy-haired toff. The electorate seem to respond well to him because he is a posh person with an air that he knows he’s a bit silly – with some wit and irony thrown in – which gives him much more democratic appeal than an inveterate Tory snob like a Cameron, Osborne or – most absurd of them all – Jason Rees-Mogg. Even his strongest detractors (Ken included) will criticize him with a smile.

So often the image (and personality cult) of Boris can completely hide the regressive, ignorant and negative things he actually says.

Boris Johnson is indescribable

Remove yourself from the collective memory of British politics for just one second and Boris Johnson – like a lot of the Tory cabinet – is an indescribable success.

He quotes the classics on Question Time to justify government policy, he was a member of the Bullingdon Club’s Class of ‘87 (alongside David Cameron and a host of MPs, bankers and child actors) and he believes indescribable things, like his £250,000 annual salary (for a second job, writing broadsheet articles) being “chickenfeed.”

In a time of (now double-dip) recession, austerity measures and high unemployment, this kind of thing should not go by the wayside. Many people across the country are still scratching their heads as to how the old lie still has legs after an austerity package that was meant to sky-rocket growth ended up in recession.

But taken more literally, Boris is actually indescribable. There is something darkly funny – but also worrying – about the fact that inept and ignorant rich men can still be running the country in the 21^st-century. Is time travel possible?

After all, Boris looks like he’s just walked out of the Regency, like a stock-character from an 18^th-century drawing-room ditty about two starred-crossed lovers who are encouraged into romance by a Foreign Office bureaucrat and dullard (with deluded hopes of high office later in life) named Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.

That’s his real name, by the way.

Whatever hurts Boris Johnson only makes him stronger

The final scene of The Blob saw the eponymous jelly being flown by transport plane to the Arctic where it would never thaw. This Blob has already swallowed up acid, bullets, cars, a whole diner and a town-load of people.

Boris’ greatest trick is that if he makes a mistake, he comes out of it looking better. His fallibility is his most attractive voting point, which is why he has trumped Ken in the personality stakes time and again over the last few weeks. While Ken’s flaws can make him look like he’s getting on a bit, Boris bursts in like a corduroy-clad debating society president who’s perennially late for the lunchtime debate.

Whatever the final result today – and at the last count, Boris is 6 points clear of Ken – Mayor Boris Johnson is not going away anytime soon. Unless Ken can fly him to the Arctic where he would never thaw.

But sometimes it can be simple too.

This week’s decision by the International Criminal Court (ICC) not to investigate Israeli “war crimes” in Gaza between 2008-2009 has been accused of “political bias” by Amnesty International.

The international court based its decision on the ruling that the Palestinian Authority (PA) is not recognised as a state by the United Nations. The Prosecutor, Jose Luis Moreno Ocampo said the court “cannot” open an investigation on these grounds.

The case for “war crimes”

Originally marketed as a “rescue operation” to return abducted IDF soldier, Ghilad Shalit, Operation Cast Lead escalated into a full-scale war between Israeli and Palestinian paramilitary groups led by Hamas.

According to Israeli human rights charity B’Tselem, between December 27, 2008-January 18, 2009, 1,389 Palestinians were killed (773 did not take part in hostilities, and more than a third of that number were children) and 5,300 were wounded (350 of them seriously). Nine Israelis were killed by Palestinian paramilitary attacks (four more by friendly fire), and over a hundred more injured.

Using the ICC’s own criteria – the 2002 Rome Statute, essentially its founding document – along with independent accounts, Israel (and Hamas) committed war crimes in Gaza between 2008-2009.

Under Article 8 of the statute (the one given over to “war crimes”), Clause 2(a) defines them as “grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949.” They include:

(i)           Wilful killing;

(ii)         Torture or inhuman treatment;

(iii)       Wilfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health;

(iv)       Extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly;

(v)         Compelling a prisoner of war or other protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile Power;

(vi)       Wilfully depriving a prisoner of war or other protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial;

(vii)     Unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement;

(viii)   Taking of hostages.

In its third clause, the ICC defines other war crimes possibly committed in international conflict. They include:

• Intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population;
• Against objects “which are not military objectives”
• Or “buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are collected.”

As far as I’m aware, excluding sub-clause (v), it is alleged Israel committed all of the above war crimes during Cast Lead, and in the iron-grip it has held over the Gaza Strip since.

Rather than detailing each and every allegation here, see the 2009 Goldstone Report instead. But, needless to say, the list includes the “deliberate targeting” of civilian centres, a shockingly high infant casualty/fatality rate, use of human shields, the destruction of civilian infrastructure (roads, hospitals, power stations, mosques, etc.) and even a school used by the UN for holding injured Palestinians.

The report advised a full investigation on both sides for what happened in Gaza. According to B’Tselem: “Not only is an independent investigation required by law, it is necessary to meet the public’s right to know what the state did in its name in the Gaza Strip.”

No such investigation has happened yet – other than the odd “principled probe” by the IDF – so presumably it is up to the international community to administer justice for the 1,389 Palestinians and 13 Israelis who died. The ICC would have been a great opportunity to belatedly address the issue of war crimes on the Gaza Strip.

Off on a technicality

But there’s a problem: statehood.

Palestine is not a state as recognised by the UN – or rather by the richest countries on the planet (including the US, Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Australia and, of course, Israel). Roughly 80% of the world’s nations recognised Palestine when Mahmoud Abbas walked up the steps to the UN building in September last year.

The ICC says in its Preamble that signatories must affirm:

that the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole must not go unpunished and that their effective prosecution must be ensured by taking measures at the national level and by enhancing international cooperation.

Does the 2008-2009 Gaza War not constitute one of “the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole”?

Judging by Palestine’s ghost history in the United Nations it does. As Bill Blum notes in Rogue State, between the (arbitrarily chosen) period 1978-1987, the United States has blocked any vote after vote condemning Israeli actions in the Middle East, or aiming to improve Palestinian conditions.

Between those years there are 37 “No” votes, on proposals ranging from the “demand that Israel desist from certain human rights violations” (on December 12, 1979: with 111 votes blocked by the United States and Israel) to the slightly more simple/desperate: “rights of the Palestinian people” (on December 10, 1984: with 127 votes blocked by the United States and Israel again). What about in 2008, 2009, or even last year? It’s no different.

“The crime in question”

Finally, the Palestinian tribunal bid fulfills the ICC’s criteria because it abides by Article 12 (3) of the Rome Statute:

If the acceptance of a State which is not a Party to this Statute is required under paragraph 2, that State may, by declaration lodged with the Registrar, accept the exercise of jurisdiction by the Court with respect to the crime in question.

The PA sent a letter to the ICC unilaterally accepting the jurisdiction of the Court in the war crimes tribunal. What else could they have done?

So if we agree there is a case for war crimes from the 2008-2009 Gaza War, the ICC provides an avenue for their investigation by both the “State which is not a Party to this Statute” (i.e. Palestine) or by a “Party State” who regards the investigation of importance to the international community (i.e. Great Britain). Can we expect a Party State to act in favour of Palestine for once?

Within the present circumstances, it was up to bodies like the ICC to use these avenues to bring war criminals to justice.

So, as has happened so many times before, Israel gets off on a technicality and Palestine loses out. The Palestinians cannot prosecute because they do not have statehood, but they cannot have statehood because the international community will not allow them.

Without an independent investigation, these are not war crimes. They never happened, nothing ever happened, as Harold Pinter would say. They were just business as usual; highly illegal, immoral and completely invisible.

Union bosses are (off the record, of course) saying they’re bracing their members for nine more years of Tory rule. The Labour leader they helped to elect, Ed Miliband, is dawdling in most – if not all – approval polls, and the rest of the party has time and again failed to present a suitable and cohesive response to Con-Dem cuts. People want better from their political establishment.

So George Galloway’s landslide victory in the Bradford West by-election today looks good. The former Respect Party leader has taken on a Labour heartland and come out of it with a 56 per cent cut of the vote, double Labour’s. It looks really good.

Just look at Galloway’s victory speech. In a typically acerbic address after votes were counted, Galloway said: “This is an uprising, amongst thousands of people, many of them young people never involved in the political process before, who have demonstrated in this mammoth majority, a total rejection of the three major parties on the British political scene.”

Everyone knows that Galloway can hold his own. I saw him speak at an event at Stockton Town Hall years ago. There was an electric atmosphere, members of the audience shouting and cheering while he got down to it. As for the Q&A session – which he made sure formed most of the evening – Galloway did not take many prisoners. The same could easily be said for his coup in a grander style – and setting – when he took on the US Senate and most definitely won.

His occasional appearances on BBC’s Question Time are a similar affair. His fire and brimstone Presbyterian-sounding oratory on the evils of Western foreign policy in the Middle East, of the Conservatives’ attacks on those most in need and Westminster hypocrisy can turn an audience anywhere in the country into a cheering rabble of firebrands. It’s impressive to watch, but it can leave a strange taste in your mouth.

After all, old George has kept some seriously dodgy company over the years. As Workers’ Liberty’s Dale Street recalls in this article, Galloway more than lacquered Saddam Hussein’s feathers in the 1990s when he said: “Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability and I want you to know that we are with you, until victory, until Jerusalem.”

More timely, and worrying, is Galloway’s support for Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. He called the bloodthirsty dictator “the last Arab ruler” and praised his Syria as “the last Arab country, the fortress of the remaining dignity of the Arabs.” Hindsight is lovely, and George wasn’t the only one to get swept up in Assadmania when he took power in 2000 (celebrated by many in the West as a democratizing influence in the Middle East). But for someone with a more intimate experience than most of Arab politics, these kinds of incidents are deplorable.

There is something to be said for Galloway’s victory. He has demonstrated a traditional Labour seat’s desire for a more progressive leadership while Labour withers away in its centrist grief-hole. The fact that Galloway is back in Parliament means he can speak, and hold others to account, in a way that only he can. We’ll certainly be hearing more in the Commons about Palestine, war crimes and the needs of poor and disenfranchised constituents in Bradford West.

The question we need to be asking is: are we willing to accept any old wind of change, even if it is based on a complex and hypocritical admiration? Or would we rather build support around something a little sturdier?

Photo credit: Emily Stanchfield

Buried in the middle of The Times recently, you might have missed the small column on a school shooting in Chardon, Ohio last week. Three students killed, two more seriously wounded, all at the hands of a 17-year-old gunman – TJ Hart, who is now in police custody awaiting trial.

We, in enlightened Europe, already have a well-worn news narrative for this. Small town American lunatic brought up on action movies and Christian retribution, takes a firearm (easily available, thanks to federal gun laws) and lights up his local school.

TJ Hart was no different. The media got hold of his pictures along with the tell-tale Facebook message:

Now! Feel death, not just mocking you […] but inside of you. Die, all of you.

True, Chardon was a smaller shooting than incidents in recent years; Columbine (13 dead), Virginia Tech (32 dead) or Tucson (6 dead) last year, which left Democrat Representative Gabrielle Giffords with severe head wounds. But how many more times can ordinary Americans keep “going postal” before something changes? And when did it all become so horribly normal?

According to forensic psychiatrist Dr Park Dietz, maintaining low profile is the right approach. In an interview on BBC’s Newsnight, following the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, Dietz offered his advice to the world’s media:

If you don’t want to propagate more mass murders: don’t start this story with sirens blaring, don’t have photographs of the killer, don’t make this 24/7 coverage,” he said. “Do everything you can not to make the body count the lead story, not to make the killer some kind of anti-hero, do localise this story to the affected community and make it as boring as possible in every other market.

When American news broadcasting looks and sounds more Hollywood each week (The Situation Room, anyone?) and the tragedies on it like unreal disaster movies, perhaps this new policy of media silence is exactly what we’re looking for?

Unfortunately not. Because last week’s editorial silence was based on a chilling brand of cynicism: three dead bodies is not enough to roll in the 24-hour news crews, to attract the international commentariat or to warrant a lengthy feature on Newsnight. Three dead bodies is boring.

Understandably newsworthiness is, in part, dictated by what has come before it (i.e. three dead at Chardon is not such a big story when a much higher number died at Virginia Tech), but journalism has a responsibility to interrogate as well as report. And very few people seem to be doing that.

The obvious answer here is to ban gun ownership: an oldie but a goodie. It’s worth remembering that the pro-ownership lobby is more nuanced than Europeans like to think (try reading the late, great Joe Bageant’s book, Deer Hunting with Jesus), but that doesn’t mean we should disagree with it any less.

The Second Amendment, which codifies gun ownership, states:

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Is the National Rifle Association (NRA) this “well regulated militia?” Or is the Amendment a mere anachronism? Either way, there seems to be a fair dose of imaginative interpretation in implementing the law.

Remove guns from the streets, and you reduce the number of deaths in heated arguments gone too far, misjudgement and – most importantly – “going postal.” There is always the possibility of speedier, and more fatal, escalation of violence in America today because of the Second Amendment.So repeal it.

In the meantime, the global media should change the way it reports high school massacres and workplace shootings. By limiting the media profile of a killer (no provocative pictures, bare bones biography and delicate reporting), “anti-hero” atrocities become less aspirational to the kind of alienated American mind that might consider them.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Organ.

Photo credit: Flair Candy

The Rihanna-Brown saga has come to an end, in a way. What started with a shocking case of domestic abuse in a roadside Lambourgini in 2009, turned into a restraining order (later lifted), a happy birthday on Twitter, and now a new song, ‘Birthday Cake.’

But this is no cause for celebration. Chris Brown’s opening line hardly hints at all that water under the bridge:

Girl I wanna fuck you right now/ Been a long time, I been missing your body.

His later sexual prowl (“I wanna give it to her in the worst way”) comes off even worse than I think it’s intended.

The growing relationship between Rihanna and Chris Brown has sent out the worst message to their fans – largely young girls and women – just one week after the Grammys gave Brown the glossy sheen of industry legitimacy his career was deservedly missing. The message? That domestic abuse is forgivable, part of a desirable, aspirational relationship and at its worst, sexy.

After the original incident, on the night of the 2009 Grammys, a social media list made up of girls defending Brown appeared online. “Everyone shut up about Chris Brown being a woman beater,” one said. “Shiiiittt he can beat me up all night if he wants.” Another: “I don’t know why Rihanna complained. Chris Brown could beat me anytime he wanted to.” One girl simply said: “I’d let chris brown punch me in the face.”

This was in 2009. Rihanna has now legitimised the entire affair by welcoming Brown back into the studio.

In many ways this is the worst culmination of the new breed of pop diva who adopts the language of feminism, while selling sex like never before. Beyonce is the ultimate New Feminist diva in the charts, her mantra: “Who run the world? Girls! Who run this motha? Girls! Who run the world? Girls!” ‘Run The World (Girls)’ sounds like Helen Reddy’s ‘I Am Woman’ with a club sensibility. But with lyrics that dominate and then coo: “Come here baby, hope you still like me,” the feminist message is hardly clear. The fact is being anti-establishment (dictatorship, men, the high street) is a good dollar at the moment.

And Rihanna is far behind. Last year her ‘Man Down’ video saw the singer being raped, before taking vengeance on the man responsible. After the video’s release, Rihanna tweeted:

Young girls/women all over the world…we are a lot of things! We’re strong innocent fun flirtatious vulnerable, and sometimes our innocence can cause us to be naïve! We always think it could NEVER be us, but in reality, it can happen to ANY of us!

For those who don’t believe pop singers should be role models (which includes me most of the time, having grown up listening to some of the most drug-addled, arrogant human beings on the planet), Rihanna is setting the agenda: presenting abuse of women in a pop video.

By stepping in on the issue, Rihanna had a responsibility to deliver to her fans, to present an example and help end Brown’s career where the record companies, collaborators and Grammys failed us.

Revoking Brown’s restraining order might have been done out of consideration, love perhaps, but laying down a track like ‘Birthday Cake’ with the man who punched her in the face, bit off part of her ear and left her by the road leaves big questions marks over how female role models represent women worldwide, and how we forgive our popstars.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Organ.

If you do anything on the back of watching the #Kony2012, the 27-minute viral sensation currently embarassing the world wide web, it’s to investigate exactly where it’s come from, who is behind it and why people have been so taken in by it.

I actually find it amazing that people can suddenly care so much about an issue that they presumably have a superficial awareness of already, just because of a social media campaign led by Twitter and Facebook twinned with a baseless campaign that aims its cross-hairs on the Western all-feeling heart.

Not a new issue  

How many people have seen Blood Diamond? On its opening weekend in January 2007 it took £1,471,104, two months later it had grossed £7,269,409. Blood Diamond also features scenes with modern African problems – the diamond trade, vicious rebel militias and child soldiers. One of the main sub-plots of the film is saving a child soldier, and returning him to his family.

This is not a new issue, nor is our awareness of it. People chose to ignore it, until now. And yet there doesn’t seem to be even a single dose of self-consciousness. We should be ashamed.

Campaign poster for Kony 2012. Photo credit: nick shultz

I’ll save you the biography on Joseph Kony, militia leader of the Lords’ Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda, since the film does it so well. The most important point here is not who he is, or what he has done (which is already known, and of course, disgusting) but what is the film and who is behind it?

Aside from Invisible Children’s suspect finances (in which around 30% of its income is used for charity business), worse is the fact so many people could be duped by a video that explicitly calls for a US-led intervention in Central Africa. Invisible Children wants its young and beautiful community to directly fund the Ugandan National Army (itself guilty of atrocities against civilians, according to Human Rights Watch), which will be led by “American advisers.”

For someone who comes across as a good Dad and a great all-round guy, Jason Russell is peculiarly fond of using Pentagonese, the opaque, Orwellian language of the military-industrial complex that gave us “collateral damage” (civilian dead), “immediate permanent decapitation” (death) and “pacification” (destruction).

What are these advisers going to be advising about? Who will their advice be advised to? Will it be good advice?

If Invisible Children is anything to go by, probably not. Because Russell and his Hipstomatic-schmaltz wants “direct foreign intervention” in Central Africa – that means boots on the ground, drones and jets in the air and the next inevitable step in America’s programme of endless global war.

You would think we had learned something after wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that have already killed over 1 million innocent people, with a 90% civilian death rate, and a “textbook” intervention in Libya which has resulted in regime change and with it the total destabilisation of yet another Middle Eastern country. This, as they say, is what democracy looks like.

Just another manhunt

A coincidence, perhaps, but since last year the United States military has been running an extensive programme under AFRICOM, the United States African Command. This includes a string of new drone airfields in the Horn of Africa (conveniently in-land enough to deal with Uganda and Kenya too), and the trans-Saharan Operation Enduring Freedom, to “fight al Qaeda in the Maghreb.”

But what about Central Africa? Last October President Obama deployed around 100 US special ops troops to Central Africa, reportedly “to assist African forces in the removal of [LRA leader] Joseph Kony and the leadership of the LRA from the battlefield.” Perhaps these are Russell’s faceless “US advisers.”

And yet there has been no reported (and verified) LRA activity in Uganda since 2006, and it is widely accepted that Kony is no longer in Uganda. Does the West really want to inflame another region by pursuing a small, embattled radical organisation and giving it indispensable credibility and victimhood? The last 10 years has told us that that policy blows right back up in your face.

“Free flow of natural resources”

There is clearly more than Kony at stake here. Central Africa is well known for its rich natural resources – including copper, cobalt, gold, uranium, magnesium and tin. Once ravaged by King Leopold II of Belgium, the 21^st-century American Empire now wants in

At an AFRICOM Conference at Fort McNair on February 18, 2008, Vice Admiral Robert T. Moeller declared the programme’s mission meant maintaining “the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market.”

Not only that. Ugandan President Yower Museveni has for some time courted Iran and President Ahmadinejad “in all fields.” There is a new Scramble for Africa – a sick twist of history in which global powers are returning to old hunting-grounds and fiefdoms, perhaps in preparation for a renewed proxy war much like the Cold War.

So where does good Dad and all-round great guy Jason Russell fit into this, at the forefront of the Kony 2012 campaign? I wouldn’t want to contribute to the conspiracy theories just yet, but the whole thing stinks of some kind of front organisation.

If it’s not, it’s a direct attempt to align social media, activism and youth political disengagement with the United States’ economic, military and imperialist interests in Africa. Think of it as America’s answer to the Arab Spring.

Please, don’t be fooled.

Predator drone: coming to a non-segregated airspace near you? Photo credit: drsmith7383

The European Commission Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) Panel recently met at the Ecole Royale Militaire, Brussels, to discuss using UAS – otherwise known as drones – in civilian settings in the future.

The European Union already uses satellites to monitor farmers’ compliance with farmer subsidies regulations, and check claims where some doubt exists as to their eligibility. Drones are currently under review.

According to the UK’s Rural Payments Agency (RPA), which handles subsidy claims, using remote technology to monitor farmland reduces visitation costs by more than half – from £310 to £115. And, the European Commission claims, it has reduced infringements.

Now officials and manufacturers are looking to branch out. The UAS Panel’s discussion booklet believes drones could be used in monitoring borders, combating drug trafficking and illegal immigration, or for use in rescue and disaster operations. The document says:

A civil/military approach for the coordinated R&D [research and development] (covering dual use UAS for e.g. reconnaissance, surveillance and communications) presents a significant opportunity for Member States and for the Union to address both civil and military capability needs in a coordinated, financially effective and efficient approach to the satisfaction of all stakeholders.

Time will tell how much of this comes true – some insiders believe it won’t be until 2012 that the EU negotiates supranational drone-friendly airspace.

In spite of this the UAS industry has already launched a comprehensive public relations campaign to change its “spy in the sky.” But it seems sensible to assume the majority of “civilian” drones will be used for surveillance and security.

So should we be worried?

After all, this comes only two months after Wikileaks released 287 files revealing the extent of what Julian Assange called the “international mass surveillance industry.”  The so-called “Spy Files” showed how private companies develop and sell surveillance technology to dictatorial regimes abroad and intelligence services at home. British companies (like BAE Systems, drone-manufacturers themselves) have already been implicated selling hacking equipment to Syria and Iran.

But in some settings, technology – like UAS – could probably work. Used properly, it could save lives in rescue operations and natural disasters, to locate people on the ground and deploy emergency services more accurately and quickly. In a “security” capacity, drones could find, and pursue, criminals from 20,000 feet – invisible from the ground.

The question that needs to be asked here is: just because we have this technology, does that mean we should use it?

This article originally appeared in The Daily Organ.

Chief reporter John Kay, chief foreign correspondent Nick Parker, picture editor John Edwards, deputy editor Geoff Webster and deputy news editor John Sturgis were all arrested on Saturday as part of the Met’s investigation into hacking, surveillance and bribery at News International’s offices.

News International's offices, London. Photo credit: Steve Daniels

Kavanagh’s article – ‘Witch-hunt has put us behind ex-Soviet states on Press freedom’ – tries very hard to pass the buck away from News International, and onto the police and public instead.

Rather than gently reminding readers that journalists are human beings who have bosses like everyone else, Kavanagh went in for the high and mighty, and in so doing ruined any credibility his argument might have had to begin with.

A free press?

“Is it any surprise,” he asks, “that Britain has dropped nine places to 28th, behind ex-Soviet bloc states Poland, Estonia and Slovakia, in the international Freedom of Speech league table?”

Well, no.

Non-profit media organization, Reporters Without Borders (who compile the annual Press Freedom Index) say in their accompanying report: “Against the extraordinary backdrop of the News of the World affair, the United Kingdom (28th) caused concern with its approach to the protection of privacy and its response to the London riots.”

So Kavanagh’s argument is immediately undermined, using the very source he provided himself.

But his whole article fails to stand up to common sense. Kavanagh even goes as far as to suggest the “good sources” that News International papers have been found to be using (private diaries and answerphone messages from mobile phones, public officials and police officers) were in fact “whistleblowers.”

Whistleblowers, sometimes

“These stories sometimes involve whistleblowers,” he claims. “Sometimes money changes hands. This has been standard procedure as long as newspapers have existed, here and abroad.”

It adds a courageous, subversive Wikileaks sheen to a shameful journalistic operation based on corporate clout, market dominance and unscrupulous management. News International is about as much the media-underdog as Murdoch himself, the self-styled Australian rebel tackling the stuffy British Establishment one paper-heist at a time.

Michelle Stanistreet, General Secretary of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), said: “Once again Rupert Murdoch is trying to pin the blame on individual journalists, hoping that a few scalps will salvage his corporate reputation.” She agreed a “witch-hunt” was in effect against journalists.

It’s certainly true that journalists are treated with more suspicion, animosity and outright worry by members of the public than before.

It’s not always their (our?) fault. And this is where Kavanagh actually begins to make sense: “Some of the greatest legends in Fleet Street have been held, at least on the basis of evidence so far revealed, for simply doing their jobs as journalists on behalf of the company.”

Channel 4's John Snow reports on HACKING last year. Photo credit: Gwydion M. Williams

“Hegemony of blame”

This is the most telling phrase: “on behalf of the company.” In the rest of the article Kavanagh is arguing for what most people understand by journalists simply doing their jobs – good, ethical journalism in the public interest. But this statement creates a contradiction because journalists simply doing their jobs on behalf of News International is not the same thing.

Stanistreet and Kavanagh are right: we should be laying less blame at the door of individual journalists. If they’ve committed crimes then they should face the law.

But ultimately the Murdoch corporate machine is to blame, because it demands unethical journalism of its journalists and then uses them as scapegoats. This hegemony of blame always works in Murdoch’s favour, and it’s about time someone turned it upside down. This is the greatest challenge of the Leveson Inquiry, the Met’s investigations and of the whole miserable hacking scandal – that somehow, a final justice can be reached that benefits both journalism and the public interest, not corporate power.

The Queen, meanwhile, spent the day on a “low-key” tour of King’s Lynn and a Norfolk primary school. Real celebrations kick off in early June with a “pageant” and a 1000-boat parade down the River Thames.

But in times of recession and a growing mood of anti-authority anger, why is the Queen still so popular?

She does have a lot of things going for her – she’s old and small (some people seem to find this “cute”), she has a well-acknowledged political intuitiveness, and she supposedly possesses that tart upper-class sense of humour that the “common man” often seems to admire. “Oh really Philip, you didn’t expect anything less, did you?”

Elizabeth is the perfect definition of Britain’s 21^st-century self-image. We like to think of ourselves as a bit unlikely, sympathetic, with a self-effacing modesty that barely hides the old British grandeur, imperial entitlement and that crushing sense of our own nostalgia. This might be the only way the British monarchy is directly representative of its people.

Despite Buckingham Palace’s attempts to re-brand “commoner” Kate Middleton as a salt of the earth, Durham miners’, sexy bitch-ornament – she’s not. (There are a number of explanations for this, but the best one is just to look at her mouth. The absence of lips is telling indeed.)

She has no lips, see? Photo credit: comrade foot

Middleton was a godsend to a royal family looking increasingly out of touch, haughty and a bit pointless. Scandal followed scandal; there was Prince Harry the posh Nazi bastard, Charles the adulterous, media-hating, arrogant arse, and Prince Philip.

And does nobody see something wrong with an institution whose main claim of relevance to modern society is that the Duchess of Cambridge’s sister is supposed to have an “upstaging arse?”

But I’m forgetting something. Despite the subservient political discourse, and misty-eyed nostalgia (most of it with little bearing to real-life), monarchists always pride themselves on the one joker left in their deck – tourism.

Tourist revenue is a common good that undercuts all republican arguments, they say, particularly in times like these: “If all those tourists weren’t buying plates with Princess Diana’s face on it, and all those nice Japanese people weren’t buying extra memory cards for their digital cameras because they’d already used three up outside Buckingham Palace doing kooky peace signs with their toes pointing inwards, where would it come from?”

But Britain isn’t seen from abroad principally as a monarchy, is it? It is seen as a place of history – and the monarchy is incidental to that.

This 2010 Telegraph article by Caroline Gammell demonstrates the unthinking acceptance of this tourism argument. The article’s sell – “Overseas tourists spend half a billion pounds a year visiting all things royal when they come to Britain, the first survey of its kind shows” – is a cop-out.

Apparently “all things royal” includes the Tower of London, St Paul’s Cathedral, Windsor Castle as well as Buckingham Palace. (I suppose that makes Norfolk’s Dersingham Infant and Nursery School “royal” because the Queen walked about in it today.)

These are destinations whose touristic desirability would not decline significantly should Britain become a republic. Foreigners would still visit the castles, museums, National Trust homes and English Heritage ruins, pubs, restaurants and whatever else if the Queen stood down. So the monarchy doesn’t attract £500 million from overseas visitors, Britain does.

Indeed a 2008 VisitBritain survey found that the royals were by no means top of the list for outside visitors. The British Museum was the “culture and heritage” site with the most visits (5.9 million) – standing at the top of a list of 25 attractions, none of them definitely “royal.”

According to the survey, “it is no surprise to find that visiting places associated with the Royal Family/Monarchy is regarded as one of the best activities to do in Britain (ranked 3rd).” But – it admits – “there is some variation in how the activity is perceived by different nations.” Which is why there isn’t a royal destination on the above list.

With this in mind, amaze at the ability of our royalty to reduce intelligent British people to preaching subservient, absolutely nonsensical schmaltz. We love to mock the Americans for being so patriotic and so stupid, but apparently, we’re no better. Today, close friend to the Queen, Lady Penn, told the BBC how Elizabeth had been the “still small voice of calm in a really social revolution in this country over the last 60 years.”

Worse still was the BBC coverage of the royal wedding last year, featuring anchor Huw Edwards and historian Simon Schama. As I wrote on the “Big Day,” (sorry to quote myself but it’s easier than re-hashing):

Since when was it still acceptable to call someone “common?” The BBC’s coverage of the event […] used the word quite liberally. “We’re all commoners here,” declared Edwards as the royals began to descend on Westminster Abbey. He later theorised on the “concept of the commoner” with Schama, who, with starch-pressed knowledge and eloquence, happily joined in celebrating the presence of mini-buses as part of the grand procession to the wedding. The “coaches” (royalty intact) “makes the point,” said Schama. “They’re just like us.”

This was certainly a low-point in a day full of them. And there will be more this summer.

So I hope you will join me in completely ignoring the next anniversary of Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas Queen, Defender of the Faith.

The transport union wrote to News International lawyers today demanding exactly who was involved in surveillance. The operation was run in conjunction with MI5-trained former policeman Derek Webb, whose list included campaigning Labour MP Tom Watson, as well as RMT General Secretary Bob Crow.

Channel 4’s political correspondent Michael Crick provides a fuller list here – which shows that News of the World asked Derek Webb to carry out surveillance on everyone from Angelina Jolie, Daniel Radcliffe (and his parents), Gary Glitter, Miss Dynamite to Prince William, David Blunkett and David Miliband MPs. It is an absurd, funny and terrifying list of names. I know what the paper could be looking to get on Miliband, but what about Ainsley Harriott? Or Alan Titchmarsh?

Members of the public were also on the list, but were excluded from Crick’s list in the interests of privacy.

However – amongst the evidence sent to the Leveson Inquiry today, RMT have included information on:

• “Illegal sourcing of data” from Driver Licensing and Vehicle Agency (DVLA) and Police National Computer by “investigator” Stephen Whittamore – for sale to union-bashing rag The Mail on Sunday 
• News International “operatives” going through bins at RMT’s national conference last year (currently subject to separate police investigations)
• The harassment of national officials, their families and neighbours by operatives
• The role of “key players” from News International in operations against RMT – including Neville Thurlbeck, former chief reporter at News of the World, whose by-line headed the Kate McCann private diaries story.

An RMT spokesman said the evidence sent to the inquiry dated back “nearly a decade.”

All in all, this all sounds like good old-fashioned Establishment snooping. While the true extent of hacking, naughty journalism and more insidious surveillance is ascertained by the Leveson Inquiry, we can only speculate as to how that fits with RMT’s information.

The union is another political target on the surveillance list, which suggests the News of the World (and the Murdochs) were interested in more than just John Major’s virginity or what Alan Titchmarsh and Elle Macpherson had for breakfast (not together hopefully).

Bob Crow is – I think – the only union representative on the list. The whole thing is reminiscent of the Thatcher government’s campaign of press surveillance, disinformation and smear campaigns in its attempts to destroy this country’s trade union movement. Crow represents the same threat to the Establishment as the likes of National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) President Arthur Scargill did in the past. He is “bully-boy” (in the words of the Mail), a Marxist and not afraid of industrial action.

Presumably this surveillance was a new chapter in the campaign against trade unions – that lasted almost 10 years – by quarters of the corporate media, security services and government.

Any incursion into privacy is wrong when it is not truly in the public interest. We can only hope the fullest extent of the truth comes to light through inquiry.