Click here to view this media Every time you think these guys can’t possibly stoop just a little bit lower with the tactics they’re willing to resort to, they manage to sink to a new low. From the Detroit Free Press — Conservative group: Fake eviction notices were ‘meant to startle people’ : The state director of the conservative group Americans for Prosperity offered no apologies today for papering homes in Detroit’s Delray district Monday with fake eviction notices. Bearing the words “Eviction Notice” in large type, the bogus notices told homeowners their properties could be taken by the Michigan Department of Transportation to make way for the New International Trade Crossing bridge project. The NITC is the subject of debate in Lansing, and Americans for Prosperity is lobbying heavily against it. “It was meant to startle people,” Scott Hagerstrom, the group’s state director, said today. “We really wanted people to take notice. This is the time that their opinions need to be heard. We wanted people to read it.” Read on… And from Think Progress — Americans For Prosperity Places Fake Eviction Notices On Detroit Homeowners’ Doors To Scare Up Support : The Michigan chapter of the Koch-backed conservative activist group Americans For Prosperity (AFP) has been campaigning against a new bridge project called the New International Trade Crossing (NITC) that the state is considering. While there may be some merit to some of the arguments against the NITC project, the tactics AFP has just been found to be using in campaigning against it are revolting . Yesterday, numerous residents in the Delray area of Detroit came back to their homes to find eviction notices. The problem was that these notices were not authorized by any sort of local government authorities. Rather, they were mocked up by AFP to look like actual eviction notices. The “notices” sensationally claimed to homeowners that their property may be seized if the NITC is constructed. Some residents, particularly elderly ones, were physically shaken by the tactic AFP’s tactics are bad enough by themselves, but they are even worse when you consider where the fake eviction notices were delivered. Michigan has the country’s highest foreclosure rate, and Detroit in particular is perhaps the epicenter of the foreclosure crisis.
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A London Wildlife Trust report shows the capital is greying, with green spaces increasingly paved over or built on If the garden of England is Kent, then its front drive may well be London, according to a survey that shows the capital’s householders and landlords are paving over front gardens, erecting sheds and decks, and cutting down trees. The biggest survey ever conducted of private space in the capital, taken by the London Wildlife Trust, shows it is getting greyer – threatening its reputation of being one of the world’s greenest cities because of its extensive public parks and gardens. The city is losing the equivalent of two-and-a-half Hyde Parks of greenery a year from its private, domestic gardens – about 3,000 ha (7,410 acres), says the report. It goes on to say that this is undermining wildlife and adding to the “heat island” effect, which sees temperatures in cities much higher than in the countryside and contributes to drainage problems as water floods more quickly into drains. The report compared city-wide aerial surveys taken in 1998 and 2006, and found that domestic gardens make up nearly 24% of the city’s total area, or 37,900 ha. Of this, about 22,000 ha, or 14% of the city, is covered with lawns and tree canopy. The report estimates that there are around 2.5 million trees in private gardens. But as a result of changing fashions in garden design and management, the area of plant-covered land dropped 12% during that period, while the area of hard surfacing increased by 26%. The survey also found that Londoners were fast discarding their lawnmowers to build sheds. The area of lawn decreased by 16% and that of new garden buildings increased by nearly 55%. Although the report was not detailed enough to identify which boroughs were destroying their gardens, suspicion fell equally on both rich and poor boroughs. Anecdotal evidence suggests that London’s greener outer suburbs, where gardens are around 10 times larger on average than those in inner city boroughs, are increasingly paving over their green space as a fashion statement. However, landlords in inner city boroughs may be turning to concrete in order to avoid paying for garden upkeep. “The speed and scale of the loss is alarming,” said Matthew Frith, deputy chief executive of London Wildlife Trusts. “Collectively these losses detrimentally affect London’s wildlife and impact on our ability to cope with climate change. It’s never been more important that Londoners understand the value of the capital’s gardens.” The reasons suggested for the decline of the garden green space include insurance companies insisting that trees are removed to avoid claims for subsidence, the infilling of large gardens to provide building land space, consumer pressure to make gardens look more like living rooms and the rise of the shed as a home working space. “There has been a great gap in our knowledge about London’s private gardens. People are taking more interest in wildlife gardens but everyone can do something to make London greener,” said report author Chloe Smith. According to Smith, nearly two thirds of all London’s front gardens are now covered with hard surfaces, whereas back gardens have around 33% lawn and 22% hard cover. “An area of vegetated garden equivalent to 21 times the size of Hyde park was lost between 1998 and 2006,” she said. Surprisingly, the survey shows that the 2.5m garden trees in London cover nearly 6,700ha, or 4% of all greater London. This makes London technically one England’s largest privately owned forests, bigger than Sherwood, and around one third the size of all the woodland owned by the National Trust. If all the public gardens and parks of the capital are included, London would almost certainly be one of the greenest mega-cities in the world. A study of 386 European cities in 2009 found green space coverage averaging 18.6%. Other British cities including Leeds and Edinburgh are thought to be comparable to London with around 25% garden cover, said Smith. Endangered habitats Wildlife Conservation Gardens London John Vidal guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …A London Wildlife Trust report shows the capital is greying, with green spaces increasingly paved over or built on If the garden of England is Kent, then its front drive may well be London, according to a survey that shows the capital’s householders and landlords are paving over front gardens, erecting sheds and decks, and cutting down trees. The biggest survey ever conducted of private space in the capital, taken by the London Wildlife Trust, shows it is getting greyer – threatening its reputation of being one of the world’s greenest cities because of its extensive public parks and gardens. The city is losing the equivalent of two-and-a-half Hyde Parks of greenery a year from its private, domestic gardens – about 3,000 ha (7,410 acres), says the report. It goes on to say that this is undermining wildlife and adding to the “heat island” effect, which sees temperatures in cities much higher than in the countryside and contributes to drainage problems as water floods more quickly into drains. The report compared city-wide aerial surveys taken in 1998 and 2006, and found that domestic gardens make up nearly 24% of the city’s total area, or 37,900 ha. Of this, about 22,000 ha, or 14% of the city, is covered with lawns and tree canopy. The report estimates that there are around 2.5 million trees in private gardens. But as a result of changing fashions in garden design and management, the area of plant-covered land dropped 12% during that period, while the area of hard surfacing increased by 26%. The survey also found that Londoners were fast discarding their lawnmowers to build sheds. The area of lawn decreased by 16% and that of new garden buildings increased by nearly 55%. Although the report was not detailed enough to identify which boroughs were destroying their gardens, suspicion fell equally on both rich and poor boroughs. Anecdotal evidence suggests that London’s greener outer suburbs, where gardens are around 10 times larger on average than those in inner city boroughs, are increasingly paving over their green space as a fashion statement. However, landlords in inner city boroughs may be turning to concrete in order to avoid paying for garden upkeep. “The speed and scale of the loss is alarming,” said Matthew Frith, deputy chief executive of London Wildlife Trusts. “Collectively these losses detrimentally affect London’s wildlife and impact on our ability to cope with climate change. It’s never been more important that Londoners understand the value of the capital’s gardens.” The reasons suggested for the decline of the garden green space include insurance companies insisting that trees are removed to avoid claims for subsidence, the infilling of large gardens to provide building land space, consumer pressure to make gardens look more like living rooms and the rise of the shed as a home working space. “There has been a great gap in our knowledge about London’s private gardens. People are taking more interest in wildlife gardens but everyone can do something to make London greener,” said report author Chloe Smith. According to Smith, nearly two thirds of all London’s front gardens are now covered with hard surfaces, whereas back gardens have around 33% lawn and 22% hard cover. “An area of vegetated garden equivalent to 21 times the size of Hyde park was lost between 1998 and 2006,” she said. Surprisingly, the survey shows that the 2.5m garden trees in London cover nearly 6,700ha, or 4% of all greater London. This makes London technically one England’s largest privately owned forests, bigger than Sherwood, and around one third the size of all the woodland owned by the National Trust. If all the public gardens and parks of the capital are included, London would almost certainly be one of the greenest mega-cities in the world. A study of 386 European cities in 2009 found green space coverage averaging 18.6%. Other British cities including Leeds and Edinburgh are thought to be comparable to London with around 25% garden cover, said Smith. Endangered habitats Wildlife Conservation Gardens London John Vidal guardian.co.uk
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Daughter reattempts to make France’s richest woman, 88, a ward of court after she invests in company run by TV mogul Only months after they kissed and made up, France’s richest woman, the L’Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, and her daughter appear to have fallen out again. Françoise Bettencourt Meyers, the heiress’s only child, is reported again to be seeking to have her mother made a ward of court after Bettencourt, 88, invested €170m (£151m) in a company belonging to one of her lawyer’s clients. The two buried the hatchet in December after a three-year estrangement over Bettencourt’s decision to give a society photographer more than €1bn worth of art masterpieces, cash and life-insurance policies. But the second act of what French newspapers call the Bettencourt affair erupted on Tuesday, after Bettencourt Meyers, 57, alerted the authorities, claiming at least one member of her mother’s entourage appeared to be taking advantage of her deteriorating mental state. Her accusations were directed at Pascal Wilhelm, Bettencourt’s lawyer and the man appointed in January to manage her “interests”. The latest spat in France’s long running family feud saw a judge, police officers and five doctors turn up at Bettencourt’s home on Tuesday to check on her health. Their arrival at the house in the chic Paris suburb of Neuilly at 8am – at least two hours before the heiress reportedly makes her morning appearance – was prompted after Bettencourt failed to keep two medical appointments. Le Monde revealed that in March a judge had decided that it was “impossible” for Bettencourt to act in her own interests. It quoted a legal document stating her “cognitive faculties” had changed for the worse and that she suffered from profound deafness. Bettencourt Meyers decided to act again when she discovered her mother had written a cheque for €170m as an investment in a company run by television mogul Stéphane Courbit, who brought the Big Brother reality show to France, and is also a client of Wilhelm. Bettencourt legally named Wilhelm to manage her fortune in January as part of the agreement with her daughter reached last December. However, Wilhelm also remained her lawyer, which Bettencourt Meyers argues is a conflict of interest. The Bettencourt affair, as it became known, began in 2007 after Bettencourt Meyers accused the photographer François-Marie Banier, 63, of taking advantage of her mother’s frailty and sued him for “abuse of weakness”. Secret tape recordings suggested Bettencourt had made Banier her “sole heir”. In 2010, the affair turned from private squabble to political scandal amid allegations – vehemently denied – that Bettencourt had made illegal donations to President Nicolas Sarkozy’s election campaign . It was also revealed that the wife of Eric Woerth, then budget minister, was working for a company managing the heiress’s fortune while Bettencourt had hidden millions from the taxman in Swiss bank accounts. Bettencourt Meyers later dropped the case after her mother agreed to change her will and not see Banier and the photographer renounce the insurance policies. This week, she told lawyers she feared a “new security cordon” was being thrown up around her mother “to the detriment of her family”. France Nicolas Sarkozy Kim Willsher guardian.co.uk
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• Proposal to increase production rejected by 6 of 12 members • Analysts foresee Opec’s power base weakening Oil prices have jumped by more than $1 a barrel after a meeting of Opec collapsed in acrimony without a deal to aid the struggling world economy by pumping more crude. Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi called the gathering “one of the worst meetings we have ever had,” after the Saudis’ proposal to increase production quotas by about 1.5m barrels a day was blocked by six of the group’s 12 members, including Iraq and Venezuela. Several countries argued that they are using their tax revenues to cushion their populations against the rocketing cost of other commodities such as food and cannot afford for oil prices to fall. Opec is not due to meet again for another three months, and some analysts said the angry divergence of views could mark the beginning of the end for the cartel. “A new world order beckons, doubtless preceded by disorder,” said Marc Ostwald, strategist at Monument Securities. He predicted that non-Opec members such as Russia and Kazakhstan could be the main beneficiaries if the cartel’s power wanes. Production quotas have now remained unchanged since 2009. The International Energy Agency, the global energy watchdog, expressed its “disappointment” at Opec’s decision and urged producers to increase output anyway. “Ongoing supply disruptions, as well as the fragile state of the global economy, call for a prompt increase in supply on a competitive basis that will allow refiners to boost throughputs and meet rising seasonal demand,” it said, adding: “Otherwise, a further tightening in the market and potential increases in prices risk undermining economic recovery, which is in the interests neither of producers or consumers.” However, Julian Jessop, chief international economist at Capital Economics, said the weakening outlook for the global economy should bring oil prices down later this year: “We continue to expect the price of Brent crude to drop back below $90 per barrel by the end of the year, as global demand continues to disappoint, the Middle East risk premium fades, and the dollar rebounds.” Oil Commodities Heather Stewart guardian.co.uk
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enlarge Republican candidates for office are finding out the hard way that support for Privatizing Ryan’s Serfin’ USA Roadmap to Ruin is really, really unpopular. Take Mike Haridopolos, for instance. He is the president of the Florida State Senate and one of three would-be GOP candidates vying to challenge Democrat Bill Nelson for his U.S. Senate seat. During a call-in interview to a St. Augustine radio show, he was asked the question point-blank: Would you vote for or against a Republican plan to overhaul Medicare? He refused to give a straight answer , trying to play it both ways. He hemmed and hawed and called the question “hypothetical” — while simultaneously positing that Ryan’s plan was a “good start” and that it had “a lot of merit.” The host eventually became so frustrated with Haridopolos’ refusal to simply answer the damned question that he simply hung up on him. It’s an important question requiring an honest, straightforward answer. Especially in the state that has the highest per capita number of Medicare recipients in the country. In sheer numbers, Florida, with 3.2 million Medicare recipients is second only to California, with 4.4 million. It’s also a vivid reminder that Medicare has become as much a “third rail” in American politics as Social Security. While the entire republican caucus in the House held hands and jumped off the cliff together, voting as a bloc in favor of the Ryan budget plan, it has also provided a wedge that has been used with some success to split the republicans. Take for example hand-picked GOP candidate Jane Corwin in last month’s special election in the New York 26th. That is Jack Kemp’s old seat and one of my grandma’s lived in that district. No Democrat had held that seat in my conscious memory. It was as solidly Republican as the district I currently live in is Democratic. But Jane Corwin said she agreed with Paul Ryan’s scheme to destroy Medicare as we know it and it cost her the seat she should have won standing up. The NRCC and the GOP leadership in the House can spin until they generate a gravitational field, insisting that Corwin was a “bad candidate” until the cows come home. The establishment still hand-picked her, after grooming her for higher office for years. If she really were a bad candidate, it would say more about them than it would about her. Medicare decided that election and even those who spin it otherwise know that statement is true, whether they will admit it or not. The fact of the matter is, polling shows that over half of the American people hate the Ryan plan, with the highest level of opposition coming from senior citizens — the exact group of people who would be spared it’s ravages. The irony isn’t lost on me that the very people who would get hurt the worst is the demographic that registers the highest support for the plan — but when you’re still on your parents insurance and don’t have any pre-existing conditions and have never looked for insurance on the private market, it’s easy to think you can navigate the system. Remember how much smarter your parents got in the ten years it took you to get from 15 to 25? Same principle here. But it doesn’t really matter, because guess who votes? That’s right. The old people who oppose it the most. I also have to admit that my inner armchair-psychologist is bemused by Ryan. As we all know, he is a Randian , and Randians embrace an “ethic” of selfishness. I honestly believe that Paul Ryan thought that those 55 and older would be totally cool with throwing their kids and grandkids to the wolves, so long as they themselves didn’t have to pay the penalty. I think he was taken aback when people asked “but what about my kids?” because he lacks the capacity for empathy that is required before one can think to ask such a question. When it turned out that most people aren’t sociopaths, I truly believe that Ryan was genuinely shocked. Not only that, it was a possibility he failed to consider, because he lacked the empathy necessary for that sort of foresight. Fortunately, that flaw always proves to be the undoing of the Objectivist Libertarians like Ryan — not just because it energizes and mobilizes the left, but because it mobilizes people of faith as well , and as we well know, there are many people of faith in the ranks of the GOP. I have long said that the republicans were headed for a split, that the religious right was going to get sick of getting nothing and split from the libertarian wing of the party. I think that all the bring-back-DADT and anti-abortion nonsense that they know is going nowhere is an effort to keep them from splitting off sooner rather than later. But fat lot of good that pandering is doing when the most prominent piece of republican legislation out there, that has dominated the news for three months now, causes true Christians to recoil in horror. * * * * * This post originally appeared at Show Me Progress and is part of a series I am writing as a blogging fellow for the Strengthen Social Security Campaign , a coalition of more than 270 national and state organizations dedicated to preserving and strengthening Social Security.
Continue reading …Time, Newsweek Offered Cover Stories, 15 Pages to Mark Foley in 2006; But About 160 Tiny Words on Weinergate
June 8, 2011 No Comment
Brent Bozell reminded readers of his column that the networks piled on 152 stories about Rep. Mark Foley in the story's first 12 days in the fall of 2006, but they weren’t the only ones with a vast left-wing disparity. 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 an 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…” TV columnist James Poniewozik compared Foley’s situation to Dateline NBC’s “To Catch a Predator” series. Gay activist/reporter John Cloud naturally insisted Foley’s sin was “Not Being True to Himself” as a gay man. Time also paid for a poll asking “Do you think Republican leaders in Congress handled the Foley situation properly or do you think they tried to cover it up?” It was 16 to 64 for a coverup. And: “Did the disclosure about Foley’s sexually explicit instant messages to teenage congressional pages and the h andling of this situation by the House Republican leadership make you less likely to vote for the Republican candidate in your district, more likely, or did it really have no effect on how you will vote?” (25 percent less likely, 4 for more, 68 no effect.) And: “Do you think Dennis Hastert should resign as Speaker because of his handling of the Foley case?” (39 yes, 38 no, 23 percent don’t know.) Perhaps these last two polling results convinced Time they'd succeeded at selling a coverup, but had to keep hammering away at Hastert on Foley before the voters went to the polls. In 2006, Foley was not only the Newsweek cover story – his story somehow required a team of eleven Newsweek staffers to handle this enormous scandal. Flood the zone! Newsweek added eight pages of coverage to Time’s seven. Editor Jon Meacham boasted up front: “As Michael Isikoff, Mark Hosenball, Holly Bailey, Debra Rosenberg, Richard Wolffe, Jonathan Darman, Arian Campo-Flores, Catharine Skipp and Catherine Gentile report in a story written by Evan Thomas, the revelation of Foley’s secret life – one that included instant messages to young House pages – sheds light on the larger culture of Washington and raises questions about the Republican leadership’s competence and accountability. And in the debut of his new reported column, Howard Fineman explores another GOP dilemma: unease within the party among politically conservative evangelicals.” Newsweek’s table of contents was blunt: “Fall of a Predator.” The Evan Thomas piece carried the subtitle “Mark Foley’s explicit e-mails could bring down the GOP. His story, and the fallout.” Next to that was a huge picture of Foley and President Bush. There were two items in the “Conventional Wisdom Watch” box: a down arrow for Bush (“Only good thing about Foley scandal is it keeps spotlight off Iraq fiasco. Gulp.”) and a down arrow for Hastert (“Won’t resign over page scandal – but will get fired as House speaker if Dems gake over in Nov.”) On the “Perspectives” quote page, they quoted Hastert saying “Ultimately…the buck stops here.” In 2011, Newsweek’s “coverage” of Weiner didn’t take eight pages or 11 reporters. It was only granted 148 words. There was no Democratic “fallout.” Newsweek was practicing “fallout containment.” There were eight tiny words in “Conventional Wisdom” on page 25, just “Junk shot puts House member in a pickle.” There was a dismissive 63-word paragraph in a Roger Ailes profile on page 10, and a few words on page 4 on “Perspectives.” They summarized: “The New York Congressman faced a PR nightmare after a lewd image was sent from his Twitter account, which Weiner clamed was hacked.
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Coalition forces carry out daylight attacks within hours of Libyan leader’s defiant television speech Nato’s intensified aerial bombardment of Tripoli continued early on Wednesday, hours after Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi made a rare speech on state television vowing to fight to the death. Loud explosions rocked the city before dawn, marking the heaviest 24 hours of air strikes in the capital since Nato’s operation began in March. The alliance said it conducted 66 strike sorties on Tuesday, with many of them in daylight hours. Previously, most airstrikes have taken place at night. The targets struck in and around Tripoli included six command and control centres, two anti-aircraft guns, a radar system and a vehicle storage facility, according to Nato. The heaviest damage occurred at Gaddafi’s Bab al-Aziziya compound, where several buildings were destroyed, sending giant plumes of smoke into the sky. Gaddafi, who is in hiding in the capital and has rarely been seen or heard from in recent weeks, reacted with fury to the attack. In a nine-minute audio clip broadcast on state television, he said: “We will not surrender: we only have one choice to the end. Death, victory, it does not matter, we are not surrendering.” Government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim later said that 31 people – soldiers, guards, and civilians – had been killed in Tuesday’s bombing raids, and described Nato as “the forces of evil”. The casualty figure could not be independently verified. In an attempt to show that Nato had struck non-military targets, government minders on Wednesday morning took journalists to see a “nature reserve”, occasionally used by Gaddafi to entertain guests, that had been hit the previous evening. The missiles had destroyed two trucks, one of them very large, a golf cart, a large tent and several containers, including one that had computer equipment and a paper shredder inside. Local officials were unable to explain what the vehicles were doing on a nature reserve, or why there were several windsocks nearby, which appeared to suggest the presence of an airfield. The surge in the number of attacks on targets in Tripoli, which follows the incorporation of attack helicopters into Nato’s mission at the weekend, is a clear attempt to end the military stalemate on the ground and hasten Gaddafi’s exit. Nearly four months into the conflict, rebels control large parts of eastern Libya, the coastal city of Misrata, and a string of towns in the western mountains, near the border with Tunisia. But the rebels, described as “bastards” in Gaddafi’s television broadcast, are making very slow progress towards Tripoli, where the regime still has a tight grip on the population. Nato defence ministers are holding a meeting in Brussels on Wednesday at which the alliance’s secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, will push for broader involvement from the allies in the escalating operation. Britain and France are currently leading the military mission. The US president, Barack Obama, said on Tuesday that the operation was progressing well, and that it was “just a matter of time before Gaddafi goes”. If he does, it seems increasingly unlikely it will be peacefully. Ibrahim said on Tuesday night that the west had not given the regime a chance to enter into negotiations, and said an African Union “roadmap” to peace was the best way forward. But he insisted that there could be no preconditions – alluding to suggestions that Gaddafi leave power and go into exile. And while the government spokesman repeated the claim that the war was an attempt by the west to take revenge on Gaddafi for his past ills and seize the country’s oil, others in the regime continue to raise the Islamist bogeyman. In comments broadcast on state television last night, one of Gaddafi’s sons, the former professional footballer Saadi, said: “[Muslim] Brotherhood members, jihadists and takfiris (other Islamist fundamentalists) should not dream to return to Libya to take charge of it. This is a battle of principles. The leader and the Libyan people have nothing to do with it.” Libya Middle East Africa Muammar Gaddafi Arab and Middle East unrest Nato Xan Rice guardian.co.uk
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MP calls for expanded investigation as list grows of those allegedly hacked by Jonathan Rees for News International Pressure is building on the Metropolitan police to expand their phone-hacking inquiry to include a notorious private investigator who was accused in the House of Commons on Wednesday of targeting politicians, members of the royal family and high-level terrorist informers on behalf of Rupert Murdoch’s News International. Guardian inquiries reveal that the former prime minister Tony Blair is among the suspected victims of Jonathan Rees , who was involved in the theft of confidential data, the hacking of computers and, it is alleged, burglary. According to close associates of Rees, he also targeted: • Jack Straw when he was home secretary, Peter Mandelson when he was trade secretary and Blair’s media adviser Alastair Campbell; • Prince Edward and the Countess of Wessex, and the Duke and Duchess of Kent, all of whom are said to have had their bank accounts penetrated, and Kate Middleton when she was Prince William’s girlfriend; • The former commissioner of the Metropolitan police, Sir John Stevens, and the current assistant commissioner, John Yates , who later supervised the failed phone-hacking inquiry for 19 months; • The governor and deputy governor of the Bank of England, whose mortgage account details were obtained and sold. Rees, who worked for the Mirror Group as well as the New of the World, is also accused of using a specialist computer hacker in July 2006 to steal information about MI6 agents who had infiltrated the Provisional IRA. According to a BBC Panorama programme in March, Rees was commissioned by Alex Marunchak , then the News of the World’s executive editor, to hack the information from the computer of Ian Hurst, a former British intelligence officer in Northern Ireland who had stayed in contact with several highly vulnerable agents. Marunchak has denied the allegations. The Guardian has previously identified other suspected targets of Rees, including Eric Clapton, Mick Jagger, George Michael, Linford Christie, Gary Lineker, Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan, and the family of the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe. None of these cases has been officially confirmed or even investigated. With many of them, it is not yet clear precisely what form of surveillance Rees and his agency, Southern Investigations, were using. Answers may lie in the “boxloads” of paperwork the Metropolitan police are believed to have seized from Rees. But the Labour MP Tom Watson told the prime minister on Wednesday the head of the Operation Weeting inquiry into the News of the World’s investigator, Glenn Mulcaire , had told him that it may be beyond its terms of reference to investigate this evidence. “Prime minister, powerful forces are attempting a cover-up,” Watson said. “Please tell me what you intend to do, to make sure this doesn’t happen.” While Glenn Mulcaire worked for the News of the World as a full-time employee from 2001, Rees worked freelance for the Mirror Group and the News of the World from the mid 1990s. His agency was earning up to £150,000 a year from the News of the World alone. In 1999, he was arrested and sentenced to seven years for conspiring to plant cocaine on a woman so that her husband would get custody of their children. After his release in May 2004, the News of the World continued to hire him under the editorship of Andy Coulson, who went on to become David Cameron’s media adviser. Rees’s targets during this period included Prince William’s then girlfriend, Kate Middleton. Scotland Yard is believed to have collected hundreds of thousands of documents during a series of investigations into Rees over his links with corrupt officers, and over the 1987 murder of his former business partner, Daniel Morgan . Charges of murder against Rees were dismissed earlier this year. Daniel Morgan’s brother, Alastair, who has been gathering information for a book, told the Guardian he was aware from his own investigations and from material revealed in court hearings that the Metropolitan police was holding “boxloads” of evidence on Rees’s activities. Guardian inquiries suggest that this paperwork could include explosive new evidence of illegal news-gathering by the News of the World and other papers. According to journalists and investigators who worked with him, Rees exploited his position as a freemason to make links with masonic police officers who illegally sold him information on targets chosen by the News of the World, the Sunday Mirror and the Daily Mirror. One close contact, Det Sgt Sid Fillery, left the Metropolitan police to become Rees’s business partner and added more officers to their network. Fillery was subsequently convicted of possession of indecent images of children . Some police contacts are said to have been blackmailed into providing confidential information. One of Rees’s former associates claims that Rees had compromising photographs of serving officers, including one who was caught in a drunken coma with a couple of prostitutes and with a toilet seat around his neck. Rees claimed to be in touch with corrupt Customs officers, a corrupt VAT inspector and two corrupt bank employees. An investigator who worked for Rees claims he was commissioning burglaries of public figures to steal material for newspapers. Southern Investigations has previously been implicated in handling paperwork which was stolen by a professional burglar from the safe of Paddy Ashdown’s lawyer, when Ashdown was leader of the Liberal Democrats. The paperwork, which was eventually obtained by the News of the World, recorded Ashdown discussing his fears that newspapers might expose an affair with his secretary. The Guardian has confirmed that Rees also used two specialist “blaggers” who would telephone the Inland Revenue, the DVLA, banks and phone companies and trick them into handing over private data to be sold to Fleet Street. One of the blaggers who regularly worked for him, John Gunning, was responsible for obtaining details of bank accounts belonging to Prince Edward and the Countess of Wessex, which were then sold to the Sunday Mirror. Gunning was later convicted of illegally obtaining confidential data from British Telecom. Rees also obtained details of accounts at Coutts bank belonging to the Duke and Duchess of Kent. The bank accounts of Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, are also thought to have been compromised. The Guardian has been told that Rees spoke openly about obtaining confidential data belonging to senior politicians and recorded their names in his paperwork. One source close to Rees claims that apart from Tony Blair, Straw, Mandelson and Campbell, he also targeted Gaynor Regan, who became the second wife of the foreign secretary, Robin Cook, the former shadow home secretary, Gerald Kaufman; and the former Tory minister David Mellor. It is not yet known precisley what Rees was doing with these political targets, although in the case of Peter Mandelson, it appears that Rees obtained confidential details of two bank accounts which he held at Coutts, and his building society account at Britannia. Rees is also said to have targeted his brother, Miles Mandelson. Separately, for the News of the World, Glenn Mulcaire was hacking the voicemail of the deputy prime minister, John Prescott, Straw’s successor as home secretary, David Blunkett, the media secretary, Tessa Jowell, and the Europe minister, Chris Bryant. Scotland Yard has repeatedly refused to reveal how many politicians were victims of phone hacking, although Simon Hughes, Boris Johnson and George Galloway have all been named. The succesful hacking of a computer belonging to the former British intelligence officer Ian Hurst was achieved in July 2006 by sending Hurst an email containing a Trojan program which copied Hurst’s emails and relayed them to the hacker. This included messages he had exchanged with at least two agents who informed on the Provisional IRA – Freddie Scappaticci , codenamed Stakeknife; and a second informant known as Kevin Fulton. Both men were regarded as high-risk targets for assassination. Hurst was one of the very few people who knew their whereabouts. The hacker cannot be named for legal reasons. There would be further security concern if Rees’s paperwork confirmed strong claims by those close to him that he claimed to have targeted the then Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir John Stevens, who would have had regular access to highly sensitive intelligence. Sir John’s successor, Sir Ian Blair, is believed to have been targeted by Glenn Mulcaire, although it has not been confirmed that Mulcaire succeeded in listening to his voicemail. Assistant commissioner John Yates was targeted by Rees when Yates was running inquiries into police corruption in the late 1990s. It appears that Yates did not realise that he himself had been a target when he was responsible for the policing of the phone-hacking affair between July 2009 and January 2011. Targeting the Bank of England, Rees is believed to have earned thousands of pounds by penetrating the past or present mortgage accounts of the then governor, Eddie George, his deputy, Mervyn King, who is now governor, and half-a-dozen other members of the monetary policy committee. According to police information provided to the Guardian in September 2002, an internal Scotland Yard report recorded that Rees and his network were engaged in long-term penetration of police intelligence and that “their thirst for knowledge is driven by profit to be accrued from the media”. Operation Weeting has been investigating phone hacking by the News of the World since January. The paper’s assistant editor, Ian Edmondson , chief reporter, Neville Thurlbeck, and former news editor James Weatherup have been arrested and released on police bail. News International Rupert Murdoch News of the World Phone hacking Tony Blair Peter Mandelson Jack Straw Alastair Campbell Kate Middleton Eric Clapton Prince William Mick Jagger Tom Watson Police Glenn Mulcaire Daily Mirror Trinity Mirror Andy Coulson Paddy Ashdown John Prescott David Blunkett John Yates Nick Davies guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media Tim Pawlenty unveiled his budget proposal today and as MSNBC’s Cenk Uygur pointed out here, “it’s got a lot of rainbows and unicorns” and is little more than already discredited Voodoo economics and more tax cuts for giant corporations. The Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen was just as critical — The ignominy of Pawlenty’s paltry pitch : Republican presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty realizes the economy is the most pressing issue on the minds of voters, so today the Minnesotan presented his economic vision at the University of Chicago. Pawlenty is calling it his “Better Deal.” If the goal was to position Pawlenty as a serious, credible candidate who knows something about economic policy, the speech was an ignominious failure. Pawlenty’s pitch was so weak, it’s startling his campaign staff and speechwriters even let him deliver it. As the former governor (and former moderate) sees it, he can usher in an era of 5% growth through “ a breathtaking series of tax cuts ,” including a massive reduction in the corporate tax rate and the total elimination of taxes on capital gains, dividends, and estates. How would Pawlenty pay for all of this? By capping federal spending at 18% of GDP — a target that makes the right-wing House Republican budget plan look fairly moderate by comparison. Don’t worry, Pawlenty says. His enormous tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations will be so great, they’ll produce enormous wealth that will make all of our problems go away. To help prove his point, Pawlenty points to the economic successes of the 1980s and 1990s — apparently unaware of the fact that he was citing years that followed tax increases . After scrutinizing some of Pawlenty’s more outlandish projections, Ezra Klein concluded : This plan isn’t optimistic. It isn’t a bit vague. It’s a joke. And I don’t know which is worse: The thought that Pawlenty knows that and went forward with this pandering, fantasy-based proposal anyway, or the thought that he doesn’t know it, and he really thinks this could work. And as Steve pointed out, Pawlenty is supposedly one of the “grown ups” or the candidates we’re supposed to take seriously as having an actual chance of winning the GOP nomination. Think Progress also has more on Pawlenty’s claim that a 5 percent growth rate sustained over a ten year period has been “done before” — Fuzzy Math: Blasting Obama, Pawlenty Falsely Claims A Decade Of 5% Growth Has Been ‘Done Before’ . Transcript of Cenk below the fold. UYGUR: In our Con-Job of the day we have Tim Pawlenty’s comical new budget proposal. Pawlenty unveiled his economic plan for America today and it’s got a lot of rainbows and unicorns. PAWLENTY: Let’s grow the economy by 5% instead of the anemic 2% currently envisioned. UYGUR: Wow, 5% growth sounds great. I wish we could get that. And even better Pawlenty’s calling for this level of growth over a ten year period. Fantastic! Can I get a pony with that? But why in the world would you think this is remotely doable Tim? PAWLENTY: We’ve done it before and with the right policies, we can do it again. Between 1983 and 1987, the Reagan recovery grew at 4.9%. And between 1996 and 1999 under President Bill Clinton and a Republican Congress, the economy grew at more than 4.7%. UYGUR: So let’s get this right. You’re saying that because during two of the fastest growth periods in modern history, the economy grew at a rate of less than 5% for a few years, it’s possible to grow the economy at a higher rate, for an entire decade. Well that sounds absurd, but hey, I’m willing to listen. How would you do it? PAWLENTY: We should start by overhauling the tax code. […] We should cut the business tax rate by more than half. I propose reducing the current rate from 35% to 15%. UYGUR: Of course! […] Of course it’s giant tax cuts for corporate America. That’s always the Republican answer. Look, we just showed you in the last segment how huge tax cuts have totally hurt our economy, not helped. Besides which, taxes are lower now than they were at any time under Clinton or Reagan. So if low taxes were the magic answer, why aren’t they creating such great economic growth now? None of this comes close to adding up. In fact Ezra Klein from the Washington Post who wrote a great analysis of this plan today called Pawlenty’s plan a “joke.” And you shouldn’t be surprised. Pawlenty loves to brag about how he balanced the budget in Minnesota when he was governor, but his short term fixes left the state with what is now the fourth largest deficit in the country. Pawlenty may try to sell himself as the great fiscal “truth teller” but what he’s really selling is tired old, Voodoo economics and that’s our Con-Job of the day.
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