Ministry of Defence payouts include £542 for a girl killed in a fire and £4,700 for a shop destroyed by a flare Afghan civilians compensated for deaths, injuries and property damage caused by British forces received £1.3m last year from the Ministry of Defence – but this was, on average, less than half of what they asked for. The lowest payment for a death was £542 after a girl was killed in a fire started by a rocket. The highest was £5,000 for each victim paid to families of a number of Afghans killed by a strike involving Hellfire missiles. While the MoD made £1.3m in compensation payments during 2010, in the financial year from 1 April 2009 to 31 March 2010 it paid out £1.42m – more than treble the £452,707 for the previous financial year and almost four times the £380,569 in 2007-08. The list of all claims that were settled or rejected in 2010 has been released after the Guardian made a freedom of information request to the MoD. The 2010 figures serve as a catalogue of suffering among civilians caught in the battle for control of Helmand province where, according to leaked diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks, the efforts of British forces have been harshly criticised by Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai , and our US allies. The MoD says the compensation amounts to “goodwill payments” which do not imply legal liability and correspond to local rates. A spokesman said: “When compensation claims are received by the Ministry of Defence they are considered on the basis of whether or not there is a legal liability to pay compensation. In some cases where there is a major threat to the stabilisation effort and it is impossible to form a view on strict legal liability, ex-gratia payments may be made for personal loss, injury or death. “The amounts paid are in accordance with local compensation rates.” Sarah Holewinski, the executive director of the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (Civic), welcomed the compensation policy but said it lacked transparency. “It’s important that the UK has a compensation programme … certainly that’s the strategic thing to do and from talking with British officers in Afghanistan, I also know they believe it’s the right thing to do. My concern is that there’s no real transparency about who got what and what for and when, not just from the UK but from all the nations operating there.” Civic said there were fewer incidents in which Nato forces caused civilian casualties last year because of directives limiting close air support and requiring positive identification of targets. But three incidents in the past month, including the deaths of children caused by Isaf (the international security assistance force led by Nato), underlined the risk to civilians and the need for a compensation policy for all international and Afghan forces. Theo Farrell, professor of war studies at King’s College London, said the increased bill for compensation could be because more civilians were being killed and more damage caused, but there could also have been a change in British policy, to make bigger payments. “One of changes may be that in 2010, American troops came into Helmand in very significant numbers and they make very generous payments. This may have affected British policy,” he said. “The other context has been the huge military push in Helmand against the Taliban. In the last 18 months the number of Isaf forces has gone up in a major way and there has been a very aggressive push in the south, in Kandahar and Helmand … If Isaf has really been trying to push the Taliban out of the south, you will naturally see an increase in civilian payments.” Raining Hellfire Air strikes and mortar bombings were most frequently the cause of payouts by the MoD last year to relatives of civilians killed in error in the course of British military operations. A strike by Hellfire missiles in the Babaji region of Helmand province in December 2009 led to £40,000 being paid out in five separate claims, one of which was to a claimant who lost two brothers and two sons. Although this and other incidents happened in 2009, compensation was not paid until last year. Fourteen reports specifically mention Hellfire missiles: 10 were settled, while three arising from an attack in October last year are still being investigated and one was declined. Five reported fatalities, one a wounding, and the remainder property damage. Other cases include £1,240 paid out for a child killed in February last year by the shock from a controlled explosion during clearance of an improvised explosive device in Sangin and £5,600 to a man whose wife and son died when a mortar caused a wall to collapse on them. Overall, £155,379 was paid out for incidents involving at least one fatality. Guidelines for US army units operating in Helmand provide for $1,500-$2,500 for the death of a child or adult. Small arms fire was cited for most other deaths, but one case included £2,000 for someone’s son who died from “illum casing” injuries, a reference to an illumination flare. Woundings account for £73,771 in payouts. The 53 cases included £1,549 for a girl who was shot and paralysed in November 2009 in Nad-e Ali and a girl of nine whose family were paid £1,198 after she was caught in crossfire in December. Unclear guidelines There were 530 successful claims for property damage, accounting for £619,699. Examples included flooding of a home after 267 trees were cut down for “force protection”, the destruction of a flour mill and shop, and damage to homes. An entry relating to one person waiting to be paid £160 states: “Alleges that when a suicide bomber was close to his home the PRT [provincial reconstruction team] and Isaf troops … took his home over for 6-10 days and damaged the inside and windows – wishes to claim rent also.” More expensive cases involved a shopkeeper who received £4,700 after his shop and stock was burned down when a mini flare set the property alight; a payment of £6,100 after property was destroyed by a 500lb bomb; a £7,000 for shops destroyed in a Hellfire strike; and £3,700, when a clinic in the village of Garmsir was destroyed. Other payments included £4,148 covering six claims arising from road traffic accidents; three claims for dead livestock, £522; 306 claims for crop damage, £387,584, often in cases where farmers were prevented from growing tall crops; £8,000 was also paid out for one incident in May last year in Lashkar Gah after a Chinook dispensed flares and ignited crops. One security guard was paid £185 after his dog was shot by a military dog handler in Lashkar Gah. The majority, 861 of more than 1,000 claims that were settled or waiting to be settled, arose in the Nad-e Ali and Nahr-e Saraj areas. Most of those settled related to incidents between June and October last year, the “fighting season”. “Nato last summer adopted its first ever compensation policy,” said Holewinski. “It’s a set of non-binding guidelines and is a big deal because it says there was agreement that compensation is important to Afghans, particularly as a dignifying gesture. Now the problem is that the guidelines haven’t gone anywhere. How would any of the commanders out in the provinces know what they mean or how to implement them? That’s for Petraeus to do [David Petraeus is the US army general commanding Nato-led Isaf].” Afghanistan Defence policy Freedom of information Military Ben Quinn James Ball Mark Tran guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media Third Way released a brand new memo on how the Democratic Party’s only hope for the 2012 election is to cut the programs for the broad middle class that are their most popular legacy and the cornerstone of their brand: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. It is an interesting strategy based on this reasoning: The deficit will be the key defining issue in 2012 Voters want to do something about it Republicans are winning on the deficit issue Democrats can’t win an election anymore by defending Social Security and Medicare The public holds “nuanced” views on the issue of whether to cut Social Security and Medicare Alongside these political arguments, naturally, they restate their long-held policy argument that cutting these benefits is the right thing — indeed the “progressive” thing — to do. And after making these points, they then do a tutorial for those Democrats who want to follow their lead as to how to talk about making these cuts, which leads with the exact same line the Republicans are using, which is that only by cutting these programs will we be able to preserve them for the long run. (Third Way’s talking points on how to sell these cuts to voters — i.e. we are making these cuts to “ensure that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will always be there for those who need it” — actually remind one how popular these programs actually are.) They then go into the Pete Peterson rhetoric about all the new retirees overwhelming the system, tell people to emphasize that these are “small adjustments, not major sacrifice,” and make it clear that “Washington must do its share.” They emphasize that this must be “bipartisan from start to finish.” It is an interesting argument given how strong and overwhelming the polling is, and always has been, to not mess with Social Security and Medicare. For an organization that spends so much time focusing on polling data and making political arguments based on it, this can only mean one thing: they really, really want to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits. I mean I knew they did already, given their January policy memo on doing just that; despite acknowledging that the future shortfall of Social Security could easily be fixed by lifting the payroll tax cap for wealthier people, Third Way preferred cutting benefits. But rather than speculating as to why they want to do this, even though the average senior citizen gets just $14,000 a year from Social Security, let’s analyze the political arguments they are making on their own merits: 1. If this election is about deficits, Democrats will lose. Elections are definitional, and if the narrative of this one is how about government is too big and needs to be cut, the Republicans will win that argument. Democrats just don’t get much credit for being better at cutting deficits, even though they tend to be. Jimmy Carter was far better at cutting the deficit than Ford or Nixon had been before him, or than Reagan was after him, but it didn’t matter. Reagan, Bush 1, and Bush 2 all exploded the deficit; Clinton created a surplus. Guess which party gets the blame for being the party of big government and big deficits? The facts don’t matter: whenever voters are focused on deficits and cutting the size of government, Republicans win. If this election becomes about which party is better at winning/investing in the future, as Obama is trying to make it, Democrats will win. If it becomes about who is fighting harder for jobs and the hard-pressed middle class, as we progressive populists prefer, Democrats win. But if it is just about which party is better at slashing the deficit and shrinking the size of government, Republicans will win that argument hands down — they always do and always will. That’s not to say Democrats don’t need to have a credible argument about how their plan will cut the deficit; they certainly do. That’s why progressive Democrats like me have been pushing so hard for ending corporate subsidies, taxing the big banks on Wall Street, cutting wasteful defense spending, reforming government contracting, and in general taking on the wealthy special interests that waste government money. But if the election’s narrative is mainly about cutting the deficit, the only question will be about how big the Democratic losses are. Third Way argues that we have no choice, that voters care about deficits more than just about anything else (they do acknowledge that they care about jobs, but say that since not much can be done about that in the short term, that will be a wash anyway.) But all voters have been hearing about from the Republicans is deficits, and if the Democrats continue to listen to Third Way’s advice, that’s all they will hear about from Democrats too. If Democrats lay out a strong case for the future, and show how they will fight for jobs and the middle class, this election might actually be on Democrats’ turf, not Republicans. 2. You know what the two biggest Republican advertising expenditures were about in 2010? Attacks on Democrats for government bailouts for the bankers, and attacks on Democrats for paying for health care reform through cuts in Medicare. As distorted as these ads were (TARP was the Bush administration’s idea, and the Medicare dollars being cut mainly involved a wasteful insurance company subsidy), they were effective because populist middle-class swing voters hated the idea of helping Wall Street while cutting Medicare. And when George W. Bush wanted to privatize Social Security, it stopped his political momentum dead in its tracks after the big Republican victory in the 2004 election. My friends at Third Way claim the whole privatization thing didn’t really hurt the Republicans very much, but any unbiased Democratic strategist is going to have to beg to differ. Third Way’s argument is that is that in the last three elections, Democrats didn’t do all that well in the elections with seniors in spite of Bush’s privatization plan, but there are a number of things wrong with that line of reasoning. First, it isn’t hard to figure out why the privatization debate didn’t have any impact on the 2008 and 2010 elections: it wasn’t being talked about much by anyone. Those elections were about the economic crisis and how you felt about Barack Obama, period, end of story. To wonder why Bush’s privatization plan wasn’t impacting the senior vote in the last two elections doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out. Second, the whole argument is designed to be misleading: as a group, senior citizens have been trending more and more Republican in recent elections for quite a while now, which anyone who studies polling trends knows. Seniors are much whiter than younger generations, for one thing, which makes them more Republican than other more racially diverse generations. They are much more likely to be churchgoing Christians, which is a more Republican demographic. They have much more traditional values on things like gay rights and immigration than younger voters. And they came of political age in the backlash years: the late ’60s and ’70s, when politicians like Nixon and Reagan were successfully scaring traditional middle-class whites with tales of welfare queens and acid dropping, abortion getting hippies. Seniors have not been a Democratic leaning demographic group since the generation that came of age in the FDR years mostly passed away. The fact that this generation of voters went 50-50 for Democrats in 2006 is actually a testament to how powerful the Social Security issue is. One final point here: Third Way’s implication in this argument is that seniors are the only ones who care about Social Security and Medicare. That is simply not the case. People in their 40s and 50s beginning to look forward to their retirement but not having as much in the way of pensions or savings as their parents did are counting on Social Security and Medicare being there for them. Younger generations in general are taking care of older parents and grandparents, and know how much they depend on those programs. These are universally supported and heavily valued programs for middle and working class voters of all ages. 3. After making all these flawed political arguments, Third Way turns back to policy, arguing as they have in the past that, in fact, cutting these programs is the right — the progressive — thing to do. Their point is that entitlements are crowding out spending on the most important things for our future, things like “innovation, children’s health, education, pure research, teen pregnancy prevention, space exploration, medical research, infrastructure, school lunches, and the arts and humanities.” Now if I thought for a minute that all those worthy programs would be getting extra money out of a fair bipartisan deal on the budget if progressives opened up to a few very modest cuts in Social Security and Medicare targeted to those who needed it the least, that might be worth discussing. But we all know that is not what is happening here. What is being discussed instead is slashes to all those programs, plus cuts in benefits to seniors, while not doing anything to raise money from all those sources that actually caused the federal deficit to explode, and are still gorging themselves at the government trough: defense contractors, wealthy agribusiness conglomerates, multinational companies getting tax breaks to invest overseas, Wall Street bankers, and millionaires whose taxes got cut dramatically by Bush 10 years ago. Look, rather than do business with this group of extremist right wingers in the House Republican caucus on something as fundamental to the Democratic Party’s identity, to middle-class Americans, and to swing voters as Social Security and Medicare, why not work to refocus the political conversation on other things that matter to them: creating good paying manufacturing jobs, shoring up public education, rebuilding our infrastructure, getting our health care and energy costs under control, and making sure middle-class homeowners get help by holding Wall Street banks accountable? Wouldn’t that make more political sense than negotiating benefit cuts for seniors who are getting $14,000 a year from Social Security, or making them pay more for their Medicare coverage? The answer is yes, unless your political obsession is to be in the D.C. “center” by making those cuts. Arguing that Democrats’ only political salvation is to anger swing senior citizen voters and their base in order to cut a deal with Republicans on the deficit only makes sense if you think that the swing voters who determine elections spend all their time at Georgetown cocktail parties. Let’s not destroy the Democratic Party coalition in order to try and save it. It won’t work politically, and it is bad policy.
Continue reading …CBS’s Nancy Giles Claims UCLA Student Mocking Asians Was ‘Straight Out of the Rush Limbaugh Playbook’
March 28, 2011 No Comment
On CBS's Sunday Morning, left-wing commentator Nancy Giles managed to attack Rush Limbaugh while condemning a UCLA student's internet video rant against Asians: “Her monologue was straight out of the Rush Limbaugh playbook from a few months ago….And Rush is a cartoon. In my humble opinion.” A clip was played of Limbaugh mocking Chinese President Hu Jintao after a joint press conference held with President Obama in January. Giles could have just as easily said that UCLA student Alexandra Wallace was taking a page out of the Rosie O'Donnell playbook . Concluding her commentary, Giles called for greater civility: “Freedom of speech doesn't mean you have to say the first nasty thing that comes out of your mouth or threaten someone you don't agree with or call them names. Freedom of speech is why I have this job. And I try to choose my words carefully. And if not that, there's always the old saying that if you don't have something good to say, don't say anything. I'm just saying.” Perhaps Giles should take her own advice, given her long history of offensive and threatening comments towards those she disagrees with: CBS’s Nancy Giles: Bristol Palin ‘Makes Me Ill,’ ‘Making Money & Leaving Her Baby at Home’ CBS's Giles Tells Tea Party's Loesch 'Shut Your Mouth', Asks King to Cut Her Mike CBS’s Nancy Giles: Joe Wilson Like A ‘Drunk At Open Mic Night’ CBS’s Nancy Giles Describes ‘Carnage’ of Bush Administration Nancy Giles: 'I Could Punch Every Blue Dog Democrat in the Nose' CBS Commentator Blasts Tax Cuts and How Bush Doesn’t Give “a Damn” About Black People Here is a full transcript of the Giles' March 27 commentary: 10:09AM ET NANCY GILES: In case you haven't heard, there was a recent video posted on YouTube by a UCLA student with some issues. ALEXANDRA WALLACE: The problem is these hordes of Asian people. GILES: And that video went viral and it's now been viewed millions of times.
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Treasury select committee’s scrutiny will raise political temperature on multinationals’ tax bills An influential group of MPs is to investigate corporate tax avoidance as the clamour grows for action on companies seen as paying less than their fair share. The inquiry, by the Treasury select committee, will raise the political temperature around the issue – already under scrutiny after questions over the tax bills of multinationals such as Vodafone and Barclays – and senior executives face the prospect of explaining their companies’ tax structures to the committee. George Mudie, the Labour MP for Leeds East and the chairman of the Commons Treasury sub-committee, told the Guardian that there was growing public interest. “When people see their standards of living fall and are paying their tax, and see huge salaries and questions over tax avoidance, then quite rightly they are interested in the issue,” he said. Mudie said the committee had not decided whether or not the full committee would consider the issue, or just the sub-committee: “I will be seeking to take the sub-committee into it unless the chairman [Conservative MP Andrew Tyrie] says we will do it in the full committee.” It would be May before the committee could consider the issue in detail, Mudie said, given pressures over the budget and the Easter break. Tax avoidance has been thrust into the spotlight recently by campaigners such as those from UK Uncut, alleging that multinationals such as Vodafone and individuals such as Arcadia’s chief, Sir Philip Green, have avoided huge sums in tax through complicated structures often based offshore. Critics allege that HM Revenue & Customs let Vodafone off a £6bn tax bill on profits funnelled through a Luxembourg subsidiary, a claim denied by the tax agency. Green’s shops have been the subject of sit-ins by UK Uncut, unhappy about a £1.2bn dividend Green paid out of retail group Arcadia in 2005 to a family trust, which campaigners say was in reality his income and should have been taxed as such. Barclays has faced criticism and direct action too, not least after disclosing that it paid £113m in UK corporation tax in 2009 after making profits globally of almost £12bn. Tax advisers say they detect no particular weakening of the rules on tax avoidance under the coalition. The government is considering plans to introduce a general anti-avoidance rule, and last week’s budget contained a range of new measures to target the issue. Bill Dodwell of Deloitte said: “There’s a considerable amount out there on tax avoidance already. I’m not sure what the committee would add.” But the National Audit Office and another powerful group of MPs, the public accounts committee, are already looking at the procedures which led to the government’s £1.25bn deal with Vodafone. The investigation comes as pharmaceuticals group AstraZeneca said the UK and US had agreed on a settlement over the issue of where its profits should be declared, an agreement which will cost the group $1.1bn (£689m). Under the deal, AstraZeneca will pay substantially less than it had budgeted for. This means the company can unlock some of its outstanding tax provisions, increasing its earnings this year by $500m and raising its profit targets by almost 7%. Its effective tax rate will also be slashed from 27% to 21%. The deal means AstraZeneca will receive tax refunds in several other countries, as profits are booked in the US instead. A spokeswoman for the company confirmed that HMRC will hand back an undisclosed tax payment to be passed on to the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS). She would not say how much this would be, but insisted it was less than the headline figure of $1.1bn. “Our UK total tax contribution will be still be substantial in 2011, and we continue to be one of the biggest payers of UK business taxes in the FTSE 100,” she said. Pharmaceuticals companies have been repeatedly caught up in transfer pricing disputes. Drugs companies would rather profits from major drugs could be booked in lower-tax jurisdictions, where the drugs are often manufactured, while higher-tax countries where the drugs were developed and marketed argue for a share of the taxable profits. In 2006 GlaxoSmithKline settled a transfer pricing dispute with the IRS, costing it $3.4bn, while AstraZeneca itself settled a dispute on the same issue with the UK last year for £505m. Tax avoidance Corporate governance Vodafone Barclays Sir Philip Green AstraZeneca Tax and spending UK Uncut Graeme Wearden Alex Hawkes guardian.co.uk
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Treasury select committee’s scrutiny will raise political temperature on multinationals’ tax bills An influential group of MPs is to investigate corporate tax avoidance as the clamour grows for action on companies seen as paying less than their fair share. The inquiry, by the Treasury select committee, will raise the political temperature around the issue – already under scrutiny after questions over the tax bills of multinationals such as Vodafone and Barclays – and senior executives face the prospect of explaining their companies’ tax structures to the committee. George Mudie, the Labour MP for Leeds East and the chairman of the Commons Treasury sub-committee, told the Guardian that there was growing public interest. “When people see their standards of living fall and are paying their tax, and see huge salaries and questions over tax avoidance, then quite rightly they are interested in the issue,” he said. Mudie said the committee had not decided whether or not the full committee would consider the issue, or just the sub-committee: “I will be seeking to take the sub-committee into it unless the chairman [Conservative MP Andrew Tyrie] says we will do it in the full committee.” It would be May before the committee could consider the issue in detail, Mudie said, given pressures over the budget and the Easter break. Tax avoidance has been thrust into the spotlight recently by campaigners such as those from UK Uncut, alleging that multinationals such as Vodafone and individuals such as Arcadia’s chief, Sir Philip Green, have avoided huge sums in tax through complicated structures often based offshore. Critics allege that HM Revenue & Customs let Vodafone off a £6bn tax bill on profits funnelled through a Luxembourg subsidiary, a claim denied by the tax agency. Green’s shops have been the subject of sit-ins by UK Uncut, unhappy about a £1.2bn dividend Green paid out of retail group Arcadia in 2005 to a family trust, which campaigners say was in reality his income and should have been taxed as such. Barclays has faced criticism and direct action too, not least after disclosing that it paid £113m in UK corporation tax in 2009 after making profits globally of almost £12bn. Tax advisers say they detect no particular weakening of the rules on tax avoidance under the coalition. The government is considering plans to introduce a general anti-avoidance rule, and last week’s budget contained a range of new measures to target the issue. Bill Dodwell of Deloitte said: “There’s a considerable amount out there on tax avoidance already. I’m not sure what the committee would add.” But the National Audit Office and another powerful group of MPs, the public accounts committee, are already looking at the procedures which led to the government’s £1.25bn deal with Vodafone. The investigation comes as pharmaceuticals group AstraZeneca said the UK and US had agreed on a settlement over the issue of where its profits should be declared, an agreement which will cost the group $1.1bn (£689m). Under the deal, AstraZeneca will pay substantially less than it had budgeted for. This means the company can unlock some of its outstanding tax provisions, increasing its earnings this year by $500m and raising its profit targets by almost 7%. Its effective tax rate will also be slashed from 27% to 21%. The deal means AstraZeneca will receive tax refunds in several other countries, as profits are booked in the US instead. A spokeswoman for the company confirmed that HMRC will hand back an undisclosed tax payment to be passed on to the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS). She would not say how much this would be, but insisted it was less than the headline figure of $1.1bn. “Our UK total tax contribution will be still be substantial in 2011, and we continue to be one of the biggest payers of UK business taxes in the FTSE 100,” she said. Pharmaceuticals companies have been repeatedly caught up in transfer pricing disputes. Drugs companies would rather profits from major drugs could be booked in lower-tax jurisdictions, where the drugs are often manufactured, while higher-tax countries where the drugs were developed and marketed argue for a share of the taxable profits. In 2006 GlaxoSmithKline settled a transfer pricing dispute with the IRS, costing it $3.4bn, while AstraZeneca itself settled a dispute on the same issue with the UK last year for £505m. Tax avoidance Corporate governance Vodafone Barclays Sir Philip Green AstraZeneca Tax and spending UK Uncut Graeme Wearden Alex Hawkes guardian.co.uk
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Millions of emails from 2005 and 2006 are likely to include those by Andy Coulson and three former editors implicated in affair The News of the World has revealed that its computers have retained an archive of potentially damning emails, which hitherto it had claimed had been lost. The millions of emails, amounting to half a terabyte of data, could expose executives and reporters involved in hacking the voicemail of public figures, including former deputy prime minister John Prescott, actor Sienna Miller, and former culture secretary Tessa Jowell. The archived data is likely to include email exchanges between the most senior executives, including former editor Andy Coulson, who resigned as David Cameron’s media adviser in January, as well as three former news editors – Ian Edmondson, Greg Miskiw, and Neville Thurlbeck – implicated in the affair by paperwork seized from Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who was on the News of the World’s books. Edmondson was sacked in January. Miskiw and Thurlbeck were interviewed by police last autumn. No charge has been brought against any of them. Coulson and the three former news editors have all denied all involvement in criminal activity. MPs on the home affairs select committee are likely on Tuesday to ask about the emails to John Yates, acting deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan police, when they question him over allegations he misled parliament in evidence he gave about the number of hacking victims originally identified by Scotland Yard. Yates told the committee six months ago the Met had only identified “10 to 12″ individuals in a 2006 inquiry because the Crown Prosecution Service advised it to adopt a narrow legal definition of what constituted an offence. The Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, has said that prosecuting counsel never adopted this narrow definition. Several News of the World journalists have since been linked with phone hacking after victims began legal battles, raising questions about why Scotland Yard failed to conduct a more comprehensive inquiry. Only one reporter, former royal editor Clive Goodman, was convicted of a crime along with Mulcaire. Both men were sentenced to jail terms in January 2007. No other reporters or executives were questioned by the initial police investigation and only Goodman’s computer was seized. Only a series of high court cases brought by Sienna Miller and others have forced the Met to make available the material seized in a 2006 raid on Mulcaire’s home, including his handwritten notes. But the disclosure of internal emails from 2005 and 2006, when Mulcaire was at his most active, could reveal the full extent of phone-hacking at the paper and the identities of those involved. In a ruling on Friday, a high court judge ordered the News of the World to make them available to the growing list of people suing the paper. Justice Geoffrey Vos, in charge of the hacking cases, ordered “rolling disclosure” to all claimants on Friday; hundreds of thousands of emails will now be handed over to alleged victims. Parts of the first tranche, which contains up to 8,000 emails, will be passed to Sienna Miller’s legal team in April. Lawyers acting for Sky Andrew, the football agent who is also suing the paper, will then receive all the News of the World emails in which Andrew is mentioned days later. News Group told the high court it is close to completing a search through archived emails it claimed had been lost when transferred to India by its IT provider; its lawyers formally apologised to the court for previous claims the archive was not available. David Sherborne, for Sienna Miller, added that it remained ‘mysterious’ that the editor of the Scottish edition of the News of the World, Bob Bird, had given evidence on oath at the trial of Tommy Sheridan last year that the email archive had been lost on the way to India. News Group also admitted a work computer used by Edmondson had been destroyed before Christmas. They agreed to provide detailed information about its destruction to computer specialists advising Sienna Miller. Computers used by other News of the World journalists have also been replaced or disposed of, but News Group’s lawyer, Anthony Hudson QC, said the data they contained had been copied and retained. Sherborne told the high court on Friday that evidence of “a scheme” between News Group and Mulcaire to hack into Miller’s mobile phone had been recovered by the Met during the raid on his home. It included an agreement to provide “daily transcripts” to the paper and monitor the activities of the actor’s friends and associates, Sherborne said. Further disclosures have been ordered by Vos. They include a copy of an email sent to Mulcaire asking him to target a “wish list” of 17 footballers. News International maintains it will take tough action against any employee who is found guilty of wrongdoing. News of the World Phone hacking Newspapers & magazines National newspapers Newspapers News International James Robinson guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Millions of emails from 2005 and 2006 are likely to include those by Andy Coulson and three former editors implicated in affair The News of the World has revealed that its computers have retained an archive of potentially damning emails, which hitherto it had claimed had been lost. The millions of emails, amounting to half a terabyte of data, could expose executives and reporters involved in hacking the voicemail of public figures, including former deputy prime minister John Prescott, actor Sienna Miller, and former culture secretary Tessa Jowell. The archived data is likely to include email exchanges between the most senior executives, including former editor Andy Coulson, who resigned as David Cameron’s media adviser in January, as well as three former news editors – Ian Edmondson, Greg Miskiw, and Neville Thurlbeck – implicated in the affair by paperwork seized from Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who was on the News of the World’s books. Edmondson was sacked in January. Miskiw and Thurlbeck were interviewed by police last autumn. No charge has been brought against any of them. Coulson and the three former news editors have all denied all involvement in criminal activity. MPs on the home affairs select committee are likely on Tuesday to ask about the emails to John Yates, acting deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan police, when they question him over allegations he misled parliament in evidence he gave about the number of hacking victims originally identified by Scotland Yard. Yates told the committee six months ago the Met had only identified “10 to 12″ individuals in a 2006 inquiry because the Crown Prosecution Service advised it to adopt a narrow legal definition of what constituted an offence. The Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, has said that prosecuting counsel never adopted this narrow definition. Several News of the World journalists have since been linked with phone hacking after victims began legal battles, raising questions about why Scotland Yard failed to conduct a more comprehensive inquiry. Only one reporter, former royal editor Clive Goodman, was convicted of a crime along with Mulcaire. Both men were sentenced to jail terms in January 2007. No other reporters or executives were questioned by the initial police investigation and only Goodman’s computer was seized. Only a series of high court cases brought by Sienna Miller and others have forced the Met to make available the material seized in a 2006 raid on Mulcaire’s home, including his handwritten notes. But the disclosure of internal emails from 2005 and 2006, when Mulcaire was at his most active, could reveal the full extent of phone-hacking at the paper and the identities of those involved. In a ruling on Friday, a high court judge ordered the News of the World to make them available to the growing list of people suing the paper. Justice Geoffrey Vos, in charge of the hacking cases, ordered “rolling disclosure” to all claimants on Friday; hundreds of thousands of emails will now be handed over to alleged victims. Parts of the first tranche, which contains up to 8,000 emails, will be passed to Sienna Miller’s legal team in April. Lawyers acting for Sky Andrew, the football agent who is also suing the paper, will then receive all the News of the World emails in which Andrew is mentioned days later. News Group told the high court it is close to completing a search through archived emails it claimed had been lost when transferred to India by its IT provider; its lawyers formally apologised to the court for previous claims the archive was not available. David Sherborne, for Sienna Miller, added that it remained ‘mysterious’ that the editor of the Scottish edition of the News of the World, Bob Bird, had given evidence on oath at the trial of Tommy Sheridan last year that the email archive had been lost on the way to India. News Group also admitted a work computer used by Edmondson had been destroyed before Christmas. They agreed to provide detailed information about its destruction to computer specialists advising Sienna Miller. Computers used by other News of the World journalists have also been replaced or disposed of, but News Group’s lawyer, Anthony Hudson QC, said the data they contained had been copied and retained. Sherborne told the high court on Friday that evidence of “a scheme” between News Group and Mulcaire to hack into Miller’s mobile phone had been recovered by the Met during the raid on his home. It included an agreement to provide “daily transcripts” to the paper and monitor the activities of the actor’s friends and associates, Sherborne said. Further disclosures have been ordered by Vos. They include a copy of an email sent to Mulcaire asking him to target a “wish list” of 17 footballers. News International maintains it will take tough action against any employee who is found guilty of wrongdoing. News of the World Phone hacking Newspapers & magazines National newspapers Newspapers News International James Robinson guardian.co.uk
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Leaked memo reveals Warwickshire police authority will take up to 150 officers off the streets Serving police officers are being taken out of frontline roles and moved to cover the “back-office” functions of civilian staff who have been made redundant, according to leaked memos which show the perverse side-effects of budget cuts. The decision by Warwickshire police authority – one of the smaller forces in England and Wales with 1,800 officers and staff – to draft up to 150 frontline officers into civilian desk jobs is expected to be followed by other forces grappling with a 20% cut in their Whitehall funding. Police officers are Crown-appointed warrant holders and cannot be made redundant. They can only be “compulsorily retired” through an obscure regulation after more than 30 years’ service, but civilian support staff do not enjoy such job security. The leak comes as a second survey of police authority intentions carried out by Labour confirms that the police are heading for 27,500 job losses, including 12,500 police officers, over the next four years. Ministers have vowed to protect frontline policing from the impact of the cuts and a report by Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary to be published on Wednesday is expected to clear up the confusion over where the “frontline” can be drawn in the battle against crime. The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said the Warwickshire situation showed that chief constables had been put in an impossible position: “It is now clear that when there is not the staff to help plan, co-ordinate or forensically investigate the fight against crime, then police officers will have to be taken off the streets to do this work. “The government needs to take responsibility and recognise that the loss of 12,500 police officers and 15,000 police staff across the country is taking risks with public safety and the progress on crime and antisocial behaviour that was made over the last decade.” The decision by Warwickshire to redeploy frontline officers to roles such as staffing inquiry offices and control rooms and conducting routine visits to crime scenes was disclosed in a leaked memo by Richard Elkin, the force’s human resources director. He has written to all 860 back-office staff inviting those with more than two years’ service to apply for voluntary redundancy: “Whilst the force manages the required reductions in the number of police officers, it has been agreed that some will be temporarily posted into police staff posts which are currently vacant, or which will become vacant following voluntary redundancy,” says the memo. The Warwickshire force faces losing 450 jobs out of its 1,800 strength to find savings of £23m in its £100m budget by 2015. The home secretary, Theresa May, and the police minister, Nick Herbert, have repeatedly said it is possible for savings to be found through cutting bureaucracy and back-office functions without hitting the frontline. Ian Francis, chairman of Warwickshire police authority, has said that there are too many police officers in the county force for the new model of policing which is being implemented. “We don’t like it, they [Warwickshire police federation] don’t like it, I don’t think the public like it, but at the end of the day we have no option,” Francis has said. Francis has predicted that other forces are also likely to draft frontline officers into support roles: “The simple matter is yes, we are going to lose policemen from the front line.” Simon Reed, vice-chairman of the Police Federation, said Warwickshire’s example would be followed by other forces: “What is happening in Warwickshire will happen elsewhere simply because of the sheer amount of money being cut from budgets. “When we lose staff in inquiry offices, control rooms or going to scenes of crime then this will happen.” Reed said the cuts would reverse a 10- year process of getting uniformed officers back into mainstream police roles: “It is a question of teamwork. We all depend on each other. The frontline depends on the back-office function.” But a Home Office spokeswoman insisted savings could be achieved without cutting the frontline. “We believe that police forces can make the necessary savings while protecting frontline services and prioritising the visibility and availability of policing,” she said. “Forces must focus on driving out wasteful spending, and increasing efficiency in the back-office. The effectiveness of a police force does not depend primarily on the number of staff it has, but rather on the way they are deployed.” Police Public sector cuts Public services policy Public finance Alan Travis guardian.co.uk
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Rome is negotiating an African haven for the Libyan leader as international pressure mounts on him to go Efforts appear to be under way to offer Muammar Gaddafi a way of escape from Libya, with Italy saying it is trying to organise an African haven for him, and the US signalling it will not try to stop the dictator from fleeing. The move came as diplomatic and military pressure on Gaddafi mounts as Britain tries to assemble a global consensus demanding he surrender power while intensifying air strikes against his forces. Britain will be hosting an international conference including the UN, Arab states, the African Union, and more than 40 foreign ministers, focused on coordinating assistance in the face of a possible humanitarian disaster, and building a unified international front in condemnation of the Gaddafi regime and in support of a Nato-led military action in Libya. On the eve of the London conference, Italy offered to broker a ceasefire deal in Libya, involving asylum for Gaddafi in an African country. “Gaddafi must understand that it would be an act of courage to say: ‘I understand that I have to go’,” said the Italian foreign minister, Franco Frattini. “We hope that the African Union can find a valid proposal.” A senior American official signalled that a solution in which Gaddafi flee to a country beyond the reach of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is investigating war crimes charges against him, would be acceptable to Washington, pointing out that Barack Obama had repeatedly called on Gaddafi to leave. “I can’t say I know of active efforts to find him a place to go, but I would not say it has been ruled out,” the official said. “The ICC has said it will ready to pursue the case, but there are also the rules of the ICC,” he added, pointing out that some countries do not recognise the court’s jurisdiction. British officials said they would rather see Gaddafi face trial, but if his escape was the price of a peaceful settlement they would be able to live with that. David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy tried to ratchet up the pressure on Gaddafi, issuing a joint statement on the eve of the conference declaring his era over, and indicating that his lieutenants might escape prosecution if they abandoned him immediately. “We call on all his followers to leave him before it is too late,” they said. Nato officially announced it was taking over control of the air strikes campaign on Sunday, but the handover of command from the US will not happen for a few days, alliance officials said. Meanwhile, with Gaddafi forces and rebels squared for a battle around Gaddafi’s birthplace of Sirte, British planes taking part in the coalition that has been conducting the campaign for the past 10 days, stepped up their bombardment. RAF Tornados hit 22 tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery pieces over the weekend, the Ministry of Defence said. In the early hours of Monday, they struck ammunition bunkers near Subha in southern Libya, according to the Major General John Lorimer, the MoD’s chief military spokesman. This is significantly more weapons than the Tornados fired over the first week of air strikes. Defence officials say the higher tempo is the result of more intelligence surveillance and assessments from reconnaissance aircraft. But British defence officials made clear they expect more restrictive targeting rules when their planes come under the command of a Canadian Nato general, Charles Bouchard, possibly by Thursday. Bouchard said that the transition would take a few days and it is a complex operation. Discord over the air strikes threatens to undermine the consensus the UK will attempt to construct at the Lancaster House conference. Russia denounced the air campaign, arguing it violated UN security council resolution 1973, passed earlier this month, which permitted “all necessary measures” to be used to protect civilians. The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said: “We consider that intervention by the coalition in what is essentially an internal civil war is not sanctioned by the UN security council resolution.” Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was also critical of the air campaign in a Guardian interview on Monday, and in a symbolic blow to the London conference, it emerged that Amr Moussa, the secretary general of the Arab League – whose support for military action was deemed crucial by Washington and its allies – would not be attending, sending a deputy instead. The joint statement issued by Cameron and the French president was intended in part to heal a rift which opened up in recent days between the countries over the command of the air campaign and France’s recognition of the Benghazi-based National Libyan Council. The rebels are not invited to the conference, but William Hague is expected to meet one of their leaders, Mahmoud Jibril. The shadow defence secretary, Jim Murphy, will warn today that Britain should be careful about siding with the rebels. Speaking at the launch of a review Labour’s defence policy, Murphy will say: “The bravery of the Libyan opposition is not in doubt. What is unclear is the motives of some, other than the removal of Gaddafi. As the opposition move westwards across Libya it is crucial that we better understand who they are and their wider ambitions.” Muammar Gaddafi Nato Middle East Arab and Middle East unrest Libya Julian Borger Richard Norton-Taylor guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media Now here’s some news to warm the cockles of your heart: Three guys named Joe are teaming up to try and help defeat one guy named Barack. The Joes, three figures popular among many conservatives, are Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, 2010 GOP Senate nominee Joe Miller of Alaska and Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, better known during the 2008 presidential campaign as “Joe the Plumber.” They are teaming up Thursday night at a launch party and fundraiser in Montara, California for “The Campaign to Defeat Barack Obama,” a group which is dedicated, as the name explains, to trying to beat President Barack Obama in the 2012 election. The organization was launched by the “Our Country Deserves Better Committee,” a conservative political action committee that’s also the parent organization of the Tea Party Express, one of the leading national Tea Party groups. The new organization hopes to raise money to run ads and build a grassroots network of up to one million supporters by next year’s election. Also scheduled to attend the event are Sharron Angle, last year’s Republican Senate nominee in Nevada, and conservative activist Melanie Morgan. The newly formed group recently ran television ads in Wisconsin supporting Scott Walker, the new Republican governor whose battles with the state’s public sector unions made national headlines. Miller went on Neil Cavuto’s Fox show last week to promote the alliance. (It was a pretty lame performance, actually; Miller just yammered his rehearsed talking points, as he usually does, and insisted that the Tea Party movement is alive and festering. Or something like that.) But this really is quite a remarkable trio, considering that all three of them have been associated to one degree or other with the dark side of the conservative movement: — Miller actually hired militia goons to rough up journalists during the 2010 campaign, and had numerous Patriot movement connections, including a long association with Schaeffer Cox, the militiaman just arrested a couple of weeks ago for plotting to kill cops and judges. (More on that from David Holthouse at Media Matters .) — Arpaio also has a long record of playing footsie with neo-Nazis and other extremists, not to mention implementing their agenda and aping their tactics . — Wurzelbacher the Plumber hasn’t gone quite so far to the right. Instead he’s just tossed the guy who made him famous, John McCain, under the bus , and indulged in the same ignorant incendiarism that brought him all that attention in the first place, including vicious and violent eliminationist rhetoric : Wurzelbacher has a reputation for being a blunt, politically incorrect speaker. Referring to Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., more than once, Wurzelbacher asked, “Why hasn’t he been strung up?” …Referring to the Constitution as “almost like the Bible,” Wurzelbacher said of the Founding Fathers: “They knew socialism doesn’t work. They knew communism doesn’t work.” You’ll notice that joining them on the bill in California are two past masters of wingnuttery and eliminationism, Sharron “Second Amendment Remedies” Angle and Melanie “Hang em!” Morgan. That’s quite a cast. My favorite aspect of all this is that these characters are being underwritten by the same people who brought you the the Tea Party Express and Mark “Colored People change minds about emancipation” Williams — an outfit that formed explicitly to oppose anything Barack Obama did even before he was elected and has been lying about it ever since, claiming (like all Tea Partiers) that they’re not a partisan organization. But it makes you wonder what’s really going on here when you have a cast like this, notable for exciting the most violent and vicious parts of the American Right — all in the service of attacking unions. Of course, the constant litany at Fox has been that these union rallies are full of “goons.” It’s looking like that was just projection/cover for their own plans.
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