Prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused of failing to remedy Kurdish-Turkish conflict Turkish Kurds have threatened a campaign of civil disobedience after Sunday’s national elections if the new government does not address their demands for more language rights and autonomy. Altan Tan, a key Kurdish politician, said relations between the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) and Turkey’s large Kurdish minority were at a nadir. He blames the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for failing to keep a promise to find a political solution to the bloody Kurdish-Turkish conflict during his eight years in office. “If Erdogan does not design a constitution which recognises our rights, we are going to start a civil disobedience campaign,” said Tan, a candidate in the south-eastern Kurdish stronghold of Diyarbakir. He said the Kurds could bring the country to its knees: “There are 17 or 18 million Kurds in Turkey who are overrepresented in a number of key industries, like construction, tourism and agriculture. We will stop working on the roads and will sit down on them and pray instead.” Others go further. In Istanbul and Diyarbakir, the Guardian met Kurds of all walks of life threatening an eruption of violence – even civil war – if the new constitution did not meet their demands. At a rally in Diyarbakir in 2005, Erdogan declared “the Kurdish problem is my problem”. In a historic speech, he admitted the government had mishandled its relations with the Kurds, saying their long-running grievances must be addressed through greater democracy, not repression. Playing on increased cultural autonomy, improved infrastructure and a sentiment of Muslim fraternity, the AKP has enjoyed solid, if far from universal, popularity in the poor south-east and has more than 60 Kurdish MPs in the outgoing parliament. Yet many Kurds complain the AKP has not delivered on its promises. “Erdogan thought he could just throw us a few candies and say that we are all brothers and that would be enough,” said Tan. “Yes, so we now have Kurdish language TV [in 2009, the AKP sanctioned the broadcast of the first Kurdish channel, TRT-6] but we could already watch Kurdish TV from abroad using our satellite dishes. Nothing important has changed.” Tan was an MP in an Islamic party alongside Erdogan 20 years ago but is now standing as an independent, backed by the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy party (BDP). The BDP has decided not to officially field candidates because of a Turkish law which requires political parties to win 10% of the national vote in order to send even one MP to Ankara. Polls suggest BDP-endorsed candidates will win 25-30 seats, up from the 19 a defunct pro-Kurdish party won in 2007. Tensions have mounted prior to the polls amid a renewed military onslaught on the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) and deadly PKK attacks on police despite a truce declared by rebels last year. Emotions are highest in the south-east, where a PKK-led insurgency has claimed about 45,000 lives since 1984 in a war the Turkish government estimates has cost billions of pounds. Many observers believe Sunday’s election will be crucial in determining Turkey’s future. If the AKP, which emerged from banned Islamist parties, wins a two-thirds majority, it would allow Erdogan to unilaterally push through a new constitution. There is talk of the “Kremlinisation” of Turkish politics amid strong signs that Erdogan wants to copy Vladimir Putin by introducing a presidential system with himself as president. The opposition accuses the AKP of wanting to monopolise power and says that, while Turkey’s constitution needs reform, a new charter without input from other parties would be simply an AKP version of democracy and would concentrate too much control in Erdogan’s hands. Kurds want official recognition. The constitution declares that everyone who lives in Turkey is a Turk who speaks Turkish. The Kurds, who until recently were widely referred to not as a distinct ethnic group but as “mountain Turks”, want the right to use their own language in public and official settings and to be educated in their mother tongue. They also want more regional autonomy to be able to run their own affairs. Jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan sent a letter from his cell in April warning “all hell will break loose” in Turkey unless the sporadic contacts with officials he had in prison were upgraded to full-fledged negotiations for a solution. Ocalan gave a deadline of 15 June, just three days after the elections, but Erdogan is not worried, according to his chief adviser, Ibrahim Kalin. “Ocalan has said such things before,” said Kalin. “The government is committed to tackling the Turkish problem, but we will not back down on our demand for the PKK to disarm. We are not talking about a ceasefire, but a full disarmament. We want them to come down from the mountains, down to the plains to fight for their demands with politics, but they only want to do that with their guns in their hands.” In Diyarbakir, civil disobedience already abounds. Every Friday since March, Muslim worshippers have boycotted prayers at state-controlled mosques to hear sermons in their native Kurdish, conducted in front of the city wall. Turkey Middle East Europe Kurds Protest Helen Pidd guardian.co.uk
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Judge tells paper it is ‘most implausible’ that former RBS chief’s alleged affair had any effect on bank’s financial difficulties Read Mr Justice Tugendhat’s judgment in full A high court judge has rejected a claim by the Sun that it was in the public interest to disclose details of an alleged affair between Sir Fred Goodwin, the former chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland, and an unnamed woman who worked at the bank. Mr Justice Tugendhat said that it was “most implausible” that the relationship had any effects on the financial difficulties the bank encountered, which lead to it becoming majority-owned by taxpayers in 2009. He also criticised the newspaper for claiming when it first put the story to Goodwin in March that the woman in question had played a part in determining his severance package when he left the bank. “No evidence for this suggestion has ever been produced by NGN [Sun publisher News Group Newspapers] and there has been no explanation as to how it ever came to be advanced”, he said. “If true, it would have been a very serious matter.” “Sir Fred Goodwin and the lady have both denied that she had any involvement in determining his severance package and that denial is not challenged. Since that initial conversation on 1 March no one on behalf of NGN has mentioned that suggestion again.” Tugendhat pointed out that the Sun had also admitted it had been wrong to claim that the unnamed woman was promoted by Goodwin at the time of their affair and that it had now dropped that claim. He also criticised Liberal Democrat peer Lord Stoneham for naming Goodwin in the House of Lords when the original injunction barring his identity from being revealed as still in force. Tugendhat said Stoneham “was frustrating the purpose of the court order and thus impeding the administration of justice, but he was doing so under the protection of parliamentary privilege”. “If he had identified Sir Fred Goodwin in words spoken outside parliament he would have been interfering with the administration of justice, or committing a contempt of court, as it is called.” He made his comments in a judgment delivered earlier on Thursday on whether a high court injunction preventing the publication of details of the affair should be lifted. He said it should stay in place , but that it could be altered to allow the Sun to reveal the job description of the unnamed woman, referred to in court as VBN, and the length of her relationship with Goodwin. But in his judgment Tugendhat also criticised the Sun and News Group Newspapers, a subsidiary of News International, for arguing that revealing her identity is in the public interest when it said at an earlier hearing that it was not relevant to the story. “It is important to note that [News Group's lawyer] Mr Spearman … said that the identity of the lady was not of significance for the story, nor was it significant that she was an employee of RBS, nor in what field of employment she worked,” he said. “Mr Spearman submitted that the only relevance of the fact that the lady also worked for RBS was that that might have made the affair more distracting than it would have been with someone who Sir Fred Goodwin only came across at the weekend”, Tugendhat added. “At that hearing NGN was expressly disavowing reliance on matters which it is putting at the forefront of its case before me.” The high court judge also rejected a further public interest argument previously advanced by NGN and Daily Mail owner Associated Newspapers, which said the fact the woman was a senior RBS employee meant Goodwin could have broken the bank’s code of conduct. “On the evidence before me, NGN has failed to show that it has conducted such investigations as are reasonably open to it to support the allegations it makes that there has been any breach of the RBS code, or that Sir Fred Goodwin was distracted from his job as chief executive by the relationship with VBN,” he said. On NNGN’s claim that the relationship, which took place at the time of RBS’s disastrous takeover of ABN Amro, distracted Goodwin from his job during a critical period, Tugendhat said: “I regard the suggestion as most implausible, and there is no evidence before me to support it.” Tugendhat also said Goodwin had been right to allow his own name to come into the public domain, however, because it was likely that the injunction barring him from being named would have been successfully challenged by news organisations. “It is in the public interest that there should be public discussion of the circumstances in which it is proper for a chief executive (or other person holding public office or exercising official functions) should be able to carry on a sexual relationship with an employee in the same organisation,” he said. “It is in the public interest that newspapers should be able to report upon cases which raise a question as to what should or should not be a standard in public life.” •
Continue reading …Domestic terrorism of the right-wing kind: One of the Obama administration’s most abject failures
June 9, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media We all know that progressives have been getting agitated for the past couple of years over the many failures of the Obama administration to stand up on behalf of their issues, with good cause. Largely, it seems, the White House is choosing not to fight for key issues because they fear the right-wing noise machine and its ability to dictate the terms of the national discourse in their favor. But there may be no area where the White House has been more cowardly than it has in dealing with domestic terrorism, where it has abjectly caved to the noise machine’s angry complaints that trying to tackle right-wing extremism makes everyday conservatives look bad. The result: Americans are far more vulnerable to right-wing domestic terrorism and its lethal effects than they have been since at least the days of the Reagan administration — particularly because that toxin has been dramatically on the rise since the day that Obama was elected president. The Washington Post’s R. Jeffrey Smith reported on this problem yesterday: The Department of Homeland Security has stepped back for the past two years from conducting its own intelligence and analysis of home-grown extremism, according to current and former department officials, even though law enforcement and civil rights experts have warned of rising extremist threats. The department has cut the number of personnel studying domestic terrorism unrelated to Islam, canceled numerous state and local law enforcement briefings, and held up dissemination of nearly a dozen reports on extremist groups, the officials and others said. The decision to reduce the department’s role was provoked by conservative criticism of an intelligence report on “Rightwing Extremism” issued four months into the Obama administration, the officials said. The report warned that the poor economy and Obama’s election could stir “violent radicalization,” but it was pilloried as an attack on conservative ideologies, including opponents of abortion and immigration. In the two years since, the officials said, the analytical unit that produced that report has been effectively eviscerated. Much of its work — including a digest of domestic terror incidents and the distribution of definitions for terms such as “white supremacist” and “Christian Identity” — has been blocked. Multiple current and former law enforcement officials who have regularly viewed DHS analyses said the department had not reported in depth on any domestic extremist groups since 2009. “Strategic bulletins have been minimal, since that incident,” said Mike Sena, an intelligence official in California who presides over the National Fusion Center Association, a group of 72 federally chartered institutions in which state, local and federal officials share sensitive information. “Having analytical staff, to educate line officers on the extremists, is critical.…This is definitely one area” where more effort is warranted by DHS. We’ve addressed this very issue here previously, in the context of the sovereign citizens’ movement and its lethal attacks on law-enforcement officers , most notably those horrifying cop killings in West Memphis, Arkansas: The incident was yet another reminder that one of the most significant ongoing threats to law enforcement officers in this country comes from right-wing extremists of the Patriot/”sovereign citizen” variety — people who take Republicans’ government-bashing rhetoric to its illogical extreme and declare themselves free of federal laws and functionally laws unto themselves. There are constant reminders of this threat — from the Hutaree Militia to the Richard Poplawskis out there. Of course, we all were witness to the right-wing shrieking over that Department of Homeland Security bulletin warning police officers around the country about the nature of this resurgent threat. That’s because conservatives are more concerned about whitewashing away these embarrassments than they are with the lives of police officers. They like to use dead cops as props to attack liberals while loudly arguing, as Glenn Beck did a couple years ago, that even paying attention to such right-wing threats is a smear of mainstream conservatives. …. The unfortunate reality is that federal officials are almost certainly not sharing this vital intelligence with police officers because, whenever they do, they’re viciously and loudly attacked by right-wing pundits for allegedly smearing mainstream conservatives. Amazingly, no one in the mainstream media seems to have yet cottoned to the fact that this really is a near-outright confession of complicity . Indeed, domestic terrorism is sharply increasing in the past two years, as evidenced by the 22 incidents and counting we’ve documented involving right-wing extremists committing acts of violence against “liberals” and government targets. But because right-wing talkers only want to discuss terrorism as a “Muslim” phenomenon , we’re getting a badly skewed understanding of the nature of terrorism. Ironically, this all is being explained away by the Obama administration as a civil-rights issue: DHS’s caution or avoidance, as its critics claim, may partly stem from worries that aggressive intelligence operations could be seen as civil liberties violations. A DHS official explained that “unlike international terrorism, there are no designated domestic terrorist groups. Subsequently, all the legal actions of an identified extremist group leading up to an act of violence are constitutionally protected and not reported on by DHS.” Seriously? There are “no designated domestic terrorist groups”? That’s not only an astonishing assessment by a supposed domestic-terrorism official, it’s outrageous. Have these supposed terrorism experts never heard of the National Alliance, the folks who distribute literature promoting domestic terrorism as an avenue to fomenting race war, and one of whose members recently was responsible for attempting to bomb the MLK Day parade in Spokane ? Or the Aryan Nations , one of the major conduits of domestic terrorism for the past 20 years and more in America? Or, for that matter, how about the sovereign citizens movement, the subject of a recent 60 Minutes expose on the rising threat of right-wing domestic terrorism? Click here to view this media Indeed, since that piece ran, two more serious cases of violence involving “sovereign citizens” have made headlines — but, the “liberal media” being what it is, only local headlines. In Ensley, Florida, a sovereign citizen shot up a local seafood market with an AK-47 because they didn’t carry crawfish (!). And in Colorado, a father of 11 who claimed sovereign citizenship shut down the state Capitol for a day by terrorizing state officials with a fake-anthrax threat mailing — one of their favorite tactics. The threat of right-wing domestic has been steadily mounting, as we’ve documented here at C&L . Here’s our map of the incidents so far: Click on map to see interactive version. It’s not only tragic that the Obama administration has — out of apparent cowardice — simply turned its back on this problem. It’s also outrageous, considering that its own electoral base is often one of the chief targets of these crazies.
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Tripoli rejects ICC allegation that soldiers had committed war crimes, while accusing enemies of cannibalism The embattled regime of Muammar Gaddafi has vehemently denied accusations by a UN panel and western governments that Libyan forces have committed crimes against humanity and war crimes. Libyan diplomat Mustafa Shaban told the UN human rights council on Thursday that his government that was “the victim of a widespread aggression” and blamed the news media, opposition and foreign mercenaries for human rights violations and even acts of cannibalism. Shaban’s comments came after the chief prosecutor for the court in The Hague said on Wednesday that he was investigating whether Gaddafi provided Viagra to Libyan soldiers to promote rape . Last week a UN panel said its investigators had found evidence that government forces had committed murder, torture and sexual abuses. The three-member panel of UN investigators also said they found evidence that rebel forces had committed some acts that would constitute war crimes, in a civil war estimated to have killed between 10,000 and 15,000 people. Shaban questioned how the protest movement could be called peaceful when it was heavily armed. The opposition to Gaddafi’s government is also backed by an air campaign led by Nato that has so far lasted nearly three months. The Libyan diplomat told the Geneva-based council that opponents had “even admitted to acts of cannibalism” – without further elaboration – and that it would “reserve our rights to prosecute the media” for what he described as misinformation. The UN panel also investigated allegations that Nato air strikes in Libya had caused large numbers of civilian casualties. The alliance has conducted thousands of air strikes as part of its UN mandate to enforce a no-fly zone and protect civilians in Libya. Ibrahim Aldredi, a former Libyan diplomat who defected to the opposition, told reporters in Geneva that the Benghazi-based rebels accepted the findings of the UN panel and would help prosecute and punish any perpetrators of human rights abuses. Libya Muammar Gaddafi Arab and Middle East unrest United Nations guardian.co.uk
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CPS stands accused of misleading courts over the collapse of a trial against six environmental activists A senior judge is to conduct an independent inquiry into evidence that prosecutors suppressed secret surveillance tapes recorded by the undercover police officer Mark Kennedy, the Guardian can reveal. The director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, has requested an independent investigation into claims, as disclosed on Tuesday, that the CPS misled courts over the collapse of a trial against six activists accused of conspiring to break into Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station . Starmer said in a statement: “In light of growing concerns about the non-disclosure of material relating to the activities of an undercover police officer in the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station cases, I have decided that I will set up an independent inquiry, conducted by a senior legal figure, to work in tandem with the Independent Police Complaints Commission inquiry into the matter which began in January 2011.” The IPCC has been looking at allegations that vital evidence was withheld from lawyers respresenting the activists. Starmer added : “The two inquiries will have full access to all the available evidence, whether held by the police or the CPS, and will share information. They will also share their provisional findings before final reports are drawn up.” When the trial was abandoned in January, the CPS told the court that “previously unavailable information” had come to light just two days earlier that undermined its case against the activists. However, the Guardian detailed how the supposedly new information – the Kennedy tapes – had been in the CPS’s possession for more than a year. Prosecutors appear to have taken part in a number of high-level meetings with police about Kennedy’s potentially explosive surveillance tapes, but withheld them from defence lawyers. In what could be a major miscarriage of justice, the withholding of the tapes may also have led to the wrongful conviction of 20 other activists who were convicted of planning to break into the same power station in December. Their case is now before the court of appeal. Starmer had already authorised two internal inquiries into accusations that prosecutors suppressed secret surveillance tapes, which was being dealt with as a “disciplinary” matter, but was under growing pressure to refer the matter to an independent body. Both his predecessor as DPP, Ken Macdonald, and Vera Baird, the former solicitor general, called on Wednesday for an independent figure to investigate the controversy. Starmer’s decision is understood to have followed a number of high-level discussions, which have included the attorney general, Dominic Grieve, and senior police officials. Senior CPS officials are also concerned that there may also have been serious failings by police. The six activists whose trial collapsed are known as the “deniers” because they told investigators they had never agreed to take part in the occupation of the Nottinghamshire power station in 2009. Kennedy, who developed growing sympathies for the activists after living among them for seven years, later revealed he secretly recorded conversations that heavily supported their case. “The truth of the matter is that the tapes clearly show that the six defendants who were due to go on trial had not joined any conspiracy,” Kennedy said. But his surveillance tapes were never disclosed to the defence lawyers – despite formal requests. On Wednesday, Macdonald and Baird both told BBC Newsnight that the controversy was extremely serious and warranted a full and independent inquiry. The former DPP said an inquiry conducted by an independent figure was “much more likely to get at the truth”. He also expressed concern over the case of the 20 activists who were convicted at the end of last year after conceding they planned to break into Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station. During the trial they argued their actions were defensible to avert climate change. The prosecution told the jury that the 20 campaigners, known as the “justifiers”, were in fact seeking publicity and did not genuinely believe their occupation of the Nottinghamshire plant would prevent large-scale carbon emissions. In April, Starmer said that the 20 convictions might be unsafe in light of the failure to disclose Kennedy’s evidence, and formally urged the activists to challenge the verdicts at the court of appeal. Macdonald said: “We are looking here at a position in which a number of people who might have otherwise have been acquitted, might have been convicted, through the absence of this material,” Macdonald said. “When it is that serious, I think you need an inquiry that is going to command public confidence.” He added: “If the prosecution don’t disclose their evidence fairly and appropriately, defendants don’t get fair trials. We saw in the 70s and 80s the effects of non-disclosure – terrible miscarriages of justice … That is the gravity of this situation and that is why I feel the inquiry needs to be independent.” Baird described the situation as “very, very, grave”. “You have maybe a bunch of people who should never have been prosecuted – at all – have been convicted … It is profoundly wrong that this occurred, and we need to find the culprits.” She added it was wrong for the CPS to “investigate themselves”. “It is the need for the public to be satisfied that this is being thoroughly investigated by somebody who has no axe to grind. The CPS blamed the police originally, the police are now blaming the CPS. We need somebody remote from both of them to get to the bottom of this.” In his statement this afternoon, Starmer also said the two inquiries working in tandem “will provide independent scrutiny of the actions of both the police and the CPS in relation to the disclosure issues arising from the Ratcliffe on Soar power station cases. It is an arrangement supported by the IPCC and the Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire. Until the two inquiries report, it is important that no conclusions are drawn about any individuals involved in this matter.” The latest inquiry announced by Starmer will be the eighth formal investigation to be launched in response to the Guardian’s ongoing investigation into Kennedy and three other undercover police officers. In addition to Kennedy, it has emerged that police officers known as Lynn Watson, Mark Jacobs and Jim Boyling were given new identities to live for several years among activists. Kennedy, Jacobs and Boyling are all accused of having long-term sexual relations with activists; Boyling even married an activist he met while living undercover. Inquiries are under way by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, the Independent Police Complaints Commission and the Serious Organised Crime Agency. Police forces have also opened internal disciplinary investigations. However, activists argue that only a full public inquiry can address the breadth of concerns about the operation run by the National Public Order Intelligence Unit. Mark Kennedy Police UK criminal justice Paul Lewis Rob Evans guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Other things happened, but you’d never know it to watch the majority of prime-time cable shows this week. So I thought a quick review might be in order. Things that make me want to stomp my feet in frustration White House contemplates payroll tax holiday for employers . Why does this set off my inner 2-year old? Because it increases the deficit by yet again giving tax cuts to companies who are actually holding this recovery hostage while they hold their breath and turn blue to bankrupt this country and drive us into a hole we might never recover from at all. Someone please explain to me how this works to create jobs? And what part of the trillions these companies are sitting on can’t be used to create them now? Rick Perry still thinking about running for the 2012 GOP nomination. The idea of a guy who actively spoke in favor of secession generating “excitement” for the GOP nomination? Ugh. Stomp, stomp, stomp. Things that make me want to cheer Blue Shield caps profits, distributes $180 million in rebates to customers . Gosh, that seems to fly in the face of the dire predictions that the Affordable Care Act will lead to terrible premium inflation, doesn’t it? The vote to delay debit card fee caps failed in the Senate . Big banks are sad; retailers are happy, and Democrats are divided. The divided Dems are no surprise, but I love it when big banks don’t get their way. Michele Bachmann’s campaign manager slams Sarah Palin , then backtracks wildly . Beyond the obvious catfight aspects, it highlights the power struggles taking place within the GOP. Rollins was absolutely 100% right when he said Palin is unserious. But after being “taken to the woodshed by the big boys” he’s contrite. What an interesting dynamic we have there. I want to know which ‘big boys’ came after him and where Palin fits in the GOP plan for 2012. But of course, that would require the Beltway boys to take their eyes off someone’s weiner. What we should not ignore The debt ceiling is still a very real problem. Fitch Ratings warned this week on concerns that it might not be raised. Someone needs to tell these Republicans not to play around anymore and get this done before there really is a collapse in the markets. Also, I’d appreciate it if, at all possible, some folks in the mainstream could possibly frame this issue as an issue concerning our ability to pay debts. Anyone who votes against raising the debt ceiling is saying, in effect, that the United States does not have the ability to make payments on the obligations it has. Do Republicans really want that? Where is their “American exceptionalism” cry?
Continue reading …Politico Erroneously Tags Retiring Rep. Dan Boren as ‘Conservative Democrat’
June 9, 2011 No CommentWhether it's deliberate obfuscation or just plain laziness is up for debate, but the media have a penchant for misleading news consumers with the meme that Blue Dog Democrats are politically “conservative.” While the Blue Dog caucus is decidedly more moderate than Democrats as a whole — you could individual members are “conservative for a Democrat” — they rarely if ever qualify as conservatives when you look at the entirety of their voting records. Take Rep. Dan Boren (D-Okla.), who on Tuesday announced he will not seek reelection in 2012. Noting that “Another Blue Dog bites the dust,” Politico staffers Alex Isenstadt and David Catanese noted that “one more conservative House Democrat is packing it in,” which is just “the latest blow to the party’s moderate-conservative wing, a faction that is beginning to look like the nearly extinct Gypsy moth Republicans of the Northeast.” But a look at Boren's American Conservative Union scores shows he's moderate at best, with a lifetime average ACU score of 49.83 percent (100% being pure conservative and 0% being pure liberal). What's more, in the first two years of Obama's terms, Boren has trended more liberal than his lifetime average, with 44 and 38-percent scores for 2009 and 2010 respectively. It's also instructive that other Blue Dogs that Isenstadt and Catanese quoted — former Reps. John Tanner (D-Tenn.) and Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.) — also had dismally-low ACU scores. Tanner's lifetime score was 39.40 conservative but his 2009 and 2010 scores were below that average at 20 and 17 respectively. Pomeroy had single-digit scores in the Obama era, eight and four in 2009 and 2010 respectively, well below his already liberal 21.18 percent lifetime average. Tanner and Boren both voted against final passage of ObamaCare , whereas Pomeroy voted for it.
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High court judge rules that Steven Neary, 21, should have been allowed to go home from care unit A local authority unlawfully detained a 21-year-old autistic man by keeping him in a care unit and refusing to allow him to return home, a high court judge has ruled. Mr Justice Peter Jackson made the ruling in a dispute over the care of Steven Neary, of Uxbridge, north-west London. The judge was told, during a week-long hearing at the court of protection in London, that Neary’s father, Mark, had been involved in a care battle with the London borough of Hillingdon for more than a year. Lawyers said the dispute started after Steven Neary went into a “positive behaviour unit” in December 2009. His father told the court that he viewed the move as temporary and thought his son would be home by late January last year. He said he felt “powerless”. The council said care staff had concerns about Steven Neary’s “challenging” behaviour and weight, and argued that the move was intended to be for a longer period. He stayed at the unit for about a year, returning to his father’s home last December following a court order. His father, a counsellor, said he hoped the judge’s ruling would help people fighting similar battles with local authorities. “I’m relieved, tearful, satisfied,” he said. “I feel vindicated. Since this got out I have heard there are a lot of other people in similar positions. “Hopefully people will read this judgment and be prepared to fight for the rights of their kids. “I knew Steven should be at home because I know Steven. But there was always more of them than there was of me. But once the legal people got involved they agreed that he should be at home. “I don’t think Steven really understands what it has all been about. For him he just likes seeing his pictures of himself on television and the internet.” The judge concluded that Hillingdon council’s use of a “deprivation of liberty” order unlawfully deprived Steven Neary of his freedom. The court of protection, which deals with issues surrounding vulnerable people, normally sits in private. But in a preliminary hearing Jackson had ruled that journalists could report on the proceedings and that parties involved could be identified. The judge, sitting in London, made the order following an application brought by five media organisations. Jackson said in that ruling: “Steven’s circumstances are already in the public domain to a considerable extent. “If the claims made by Mr Neary are made out … the facts deserve to be known to the public. If they are not made out, it may be right for the record to be corrected. “There is no evidence whatever that Steven has suffered from the publicity that has already been generated. His life has not been destabilised and he has not been made anxious by the coverage so far.” Social care Local government Autism guardian.co.uk
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Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now spent the hour with Bill Moyers discussing his new book and his career as a journalist. I really miss his weekly show on PBS now that he’s off the air there. Bill Moyers on His Legendary Journalism Career: “Democracy Should Be a Brake on Unbridled Greed and Power” : Credit: Democracy Now! In a Democracy Now! special broadcast, we are joined by legendary journalist Bill Moyers, a founding organizer of the Peace Corps, press secretary for President Lyndon Johnson, a publisher of Newsday, and senior correspondent for CBS News. Public television is where he has made his home, producing many groundbreaking shows and winning more than 30 Emmy Awards. Moyers has just published a new book, “Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues,” a collection of interviews from his popular PBS show that aired from 2007 to 2010. “The greatest change in politics in my time has been the transformation of democracy, America, from a citizens’ society, the moral agency of all those people in the civil rights movement who stood up against the weight of authority and against persecution and acted as agents of change—the change from a citizens’ society to a consumer society, where most of us are caught up on that treadmill, trying to get more,” Moyers says. In a wide-ranging interview, he also discusses the state of the public media infrastructure he helped to establish as part of the Johnson administration. “Public broadcasting, which remains a place that treats you as a citizen and not a consumer, is also threatened. We must defend it. We must call it back to its heights. We must continue to support it, because without it, we’re at the mercy, totally, of corporate power.” Full transcript available at Democracy Now’s site.
Continue reading …Howard Kurtz on Weiner: ‘I’ve Never Seen Media Spin This Out of Control Over a Sex Scandal’
June 9, 2011 No Comment
CNN's Howard Kurtz made a statement to his colleague Eliot Spitzer Wednesday that folks who remember the media firestorm surrounding former Congressman Mark Foley (R-Fla.) will find hard to believe. Appearing on “In the Arena,” the media analyst complained about the amount of coverage recent sex scandals involving Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), John Edwards, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Dominque Strauss-Kahn have received saying, “I've just never seen it spin at this velocity, this out of control” (video follows with transcript and commentary): ELIOT SPITZER, HOST: Let's switch gears. Switch the lens. To turn the focus back to the media. How has the media handled this? So there you have Andrew Breitbart who is, by many people, reviled. That what he has done in the past allegedly about taking tapes, cutting and splicing to misrepresent, had made him a pariah within the mainstream media. And now here he is having led to this, and I think many people are going to say he's rehabilitated himself, whereas the mainstream media was nowhere until he led the mainstream media by the nose. Do you see it this way? Am I wrong? HOWARD KURTZ: I don't see Andrew Breitbart as having anything done anything wrong on this story. Indeed he held back the photo although he allowed Opie and Anthony to take a picture of it. But having ricocheted now, Eliot, from — to John Edwards, to Arnold Schwarzenegger, to Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and now this story, each one is legitimate. I can sit here and defend to you each one of those stories. But the degree of piling on, the way it takes away, hijacks cable news away, it hijacks the morning shows away, it is all over the Internet, says to me that we are more interested in covering salacious topics than the matters of the economy, war and peace. That's not a novel statement on my part. I've just never seen it spin at this velocity, this out of control. I guess Kurtz is forgetting the wall-to-wall coverage the Foley sex scandal got in the fall of 2006 when during the weeks leading up to the midterm elections, you couldn't turn on a television set or open up a newspaper without hearing or reading about it and how it was somehow tied to a Republican “culture of corruption.” As NewsBusters reported Wednesday, the disparity in the coverage of the Foley and Weiner scandals is perfectly demonstrated by how magazines Newsweek and Time handled them: Time and Newsweek each devoted cover stories and multiple pages to the Foley scandal. Time put an elephant’s rear end on the cover with the words “What a Mess…Why a tawdry Washington sex scandal may spell the end of the Republican revolution”. Newsweek had a huge picture of Foley (with a small President Bush in front of his face) with the huge headline “Off Message” and the subhead “Foley’s Secret Life: How a Predator’s E-mail Sex Scandal Could Cost Bush Congress.” Obviously, there were no Anthony Weiner cover stories this week (dated June 13): Time had Dr. Oz, and Newsweek mocked Mitt Romney’s Mormonism as they promoted the vulgar South Park musical “The Book of Mormon.” How many Weinergate pages inside? Do you have to guess? There's not a “page” at all. Time magazine was funnier: try reading the whole issue for any mention of Weiner. There’s no news story, no funny quote from Weiner about “certitude” in the “Verbatim” feature. Then on page 83, in tiny six-point type in the “Pop Chart” feature, there are these tiny words: “A college student received a lewd picture from his allegedly hacked Twitter account.” Thirteen words and a tiny, upside-down picture. What a contrast: In 2006, Time’s table of contents page highlighted the cover story: “Whatever happened to the Republican revolution? The reformers who took Congress in 1994 are gone, replaced by pols who seem willing to do anything to hold power – even overlook a Congressman’s improprieties with teens.” Time devoted eight precious pages to the Foley scandal, including two hostile one-page columns from Time staffers answering the question “Mark Foley’s Real Sin Was…” If Kurtz thinks media have never spun “at this velocity, this out of control” over a sex scandal, he must have been out of the country in the fall of 2006.
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