Mark Steel: My guess is the cleaners are to blame

Mark Steel: My guess is the cleaners are to blame.

This year's television drama awards must surely go to the news, whose current scriptwriters are outstanding. Next week Newsnight will end with James Murdoch being told his real dad isn't Rupert, it's Fidel Castro. Then the credits will roll and we'll all be desperate to see the next episode.

The only quibble I have is those days when there are two resignations, as the second one comes before there's time to properly enjoy the first. So come on police chiefs, spare a thought for your public and space these things out properly.

Yesterday's instalment was genius, in which Rupert himself answered questions such as "Mr Murdoch, do you remember a paper called the News of the World" with "Er, hmmm, the what? News you say, hmmmmm, brrr err I don't recall it." It's a sign of Murdoch's declining power that he didn't buy the rights to show himself at the select committee and put it on Sky on pay-per-view.

But for all the resignations and arrests no one yet has personally admitted to doing anything wrong. For example, there seems to be an agreed line that ex-policeman Yates didn't pursue the first investigation properly because he was busy dealing with other issues, such as terrorism. I hope he was more thorough with that part of his job, and didn't say: "I've got a bin liner full of documents here with details about where al-Qa'ida is planning to blow up. So I want everyone to work round the clock in ignoring them completely. That should keep everyone safe."

To be fair there were other matters the police were dealing with at this time. Just one incident that clogged them up for a while was the perjury case against Tommy Sheridan, the socialist member of the Scottish parliament, after he successfully sued the News of the World for libel, which had claimed he'd been to a swingers' club. It was reported that Rupert pledged revenge against the "Commie bastard", Luckily he didn't have to ask the police for their help, because they spent £1.5m on an investigation, taking what they accept was "thousands" of hours, at the same period that the investigation into phone hacking was slightly less rigorous.

Maybe this was part of the counter-terrorism campaign, and they thought Tommy Sheridan was planning a new trend in suicide bombing, in which Scottish socialists turn up at swingers' clubs dressed only in explosives in the knowledge everyone will think it's a fetish, before blowing themselves up in support of the campaign for an increase in the minimum wage.

BBC Scotland wondered at the time: "Why should precious resources be wasted on such a stupid exercise?" as it's almost unprecedented for the police to pursue a case of perjury after a libel trial. Tommy Sheridan's car and phone were bugged, and the trial that sent him to jail cost millions more, but luckily the police found the funds and time for this, probably because the evidence wasn't wrapped up in bin liners, which are a nuisance to open.

One answer may be that at the time the paper and the police seemed to be getting on extremely well, with the paper paying policemen, and the police employing PR people from the paper. But that would be cynical as this was clearly an elaborate job-exchange system, similar to those programmes where they get dustmen and accountants to swap places for a week.

But these are complicated questions because News International is a complex company. The company has paid thousands in legal fees but the owners have no idea who made the payments. My guess is it was one of the cleaners. And the most ridiculous plot line in this story altogether, is that the bumbling, pathetic, forgetful fool who sat there unable to answer any questions about his own company in yesterday's hearing, is the bloke all our governments have been grovelling to for the last 30 years.

Fidel Castro. Then the credits will roll and we'll all be desperate to see the next episode.

The only quibble I have is those days when there are two resignations, as the second one comes before there's time to properly enjoy the first. So come on police chiefs, spare a thought for your public and space these things out properly.

Link: SOLIDARITY WITH TOMMY SHERIDAN - Socialist Unity Blog
Link: Mark Steel in The Independent

Strike the empire back by George Galloway

Strike the empire back by George Galloway in the Morning Star.

Twenty-five years ago today I, along with many a Morning Star supporter, would have been preparing to head out east of Tower Hill to join the courageous sacked print workers and journalists on the Saturday night picket of fortress Wapping.

Oh how the Establishment railed against us, and with them nearly every national title.

The trade unions were a cancer at the heart of British society, you see.

They were the bully boys, a threat to freedom of speech and opinion, an unaccountable power subverting the democratic process.

And now?

Well, we all know where we are - or do we?

It's worth reminding ourselves of some profound truths.

Because in an age of 24-hour rolling news we are already seeing moves to bury the full depravity of what went on at the News of the World and still does in Murdoch's empire under mutual backslapping, asinine comment and extraneous detail.

Murdoch and the rich and powerful whose interests he so assiduously promotes are desperate to cap this volcano of public outrage.

For all the righteous indignation and talk of inquiries, powerful interests way beyond Murdoch don't want us to examine the fundamental questions.

Here is the flagship paper of an overweening media empire which helped hurl this country into war after war and then hacked the phones of relatives grieving at the loss of the very soldiers it had done so much to put in harm's way.

And then, with a straight face, "campaigned" for the armed forces' covenant.

Here is a rag which took genuine public grief at horrific crimes against children, manipulated it into dangerous and cynical campaigns to sell more papers, and all the while spied on the parents of the very murdered child in whose name it said it was acting.

Here is a sewer which gushes forth filthy smears that disabled people and single parents are scroungers who refuse to take responsibility, while its gilded executives - the son placed in the top job by daddy - sack others to save their own.

No-one should be surprised, because this is an outfit that vilifies migrants and Muslims while remaining in the grip of a foreign billionaire who scarcely pays tax in this country.

Through it all, of course, were the sub-pornographic titillation and advertising offers - the bread and circuses which were the News of the World's stock in trade for a century and a half. For that reason alone, while no-one wants to see people losing their jobs as austerity stalks the land, I for one cannot summon up some faux nostalgia for the dirty little secret that came out each Sunday.

What sympathy comes from the leader columns of Murdoch's papers for the hundreds of thousands of people who are being thrown out of work on account of the bankers' gambling?

And this is the inconvenient truth which is lapping at the door of David Cameron and all he represents.

The News of the World was a pillar of the Establishment.

It and Murdoch have fuelled the furnace in which bigotry, nastiness and narrow-mindedness were boiled up and poured like an acid onto everything good in this society.

Worse for Cameron, he - as Blair before him - is bound by a thousand golden threads to Murdoch.

He went horse-riding regularly with Rebekah Brooks and shared last Christmas dinner with her.

Ed Miliband and Labour have astutely focused on Brooks and Andy Coulson.

The orchestration was so smooth this week that I sensed the hand of Peter Mandelson, who swore that Murdoch would regret pulling support for New Labour.

Everyone knows that Cameron is next in the crosshairs.

It was he who hired the disgraced former editor of the News of the World to be his press supremo.

Now Coulson is interviewed under caution, arrested and his testimony at Tommy Sheridan's perjury trial being re-examined for... possible perjury.

The police themselves have a case to answer.

The original investigation was perfunctory in the extreme - we had already been told brazenly by Brooks at a parliamentary committee that her paper often paid police officers for information.

Think about that. It was eight years ago.

It was largely passed over by press, Parliament and police.

It was an admission of a serious crime - suborning public officials, police officers no less.

Then a senior police officer who was involved in the first fiasco investigation, got a job with Murdoch.

Now we know that the sums involved were rather large.

And for those who chose to see, the corruption was plain. I spoke about it in Parliament and in the courts, when I exposed the agent provocateur Mazer Mahmoud, aka the Fake Sheikh.

How they dismissed it as the whining of the left, yesterday's men - the dinosaurs who were felled at Wapping a quarter of a century ago.

Now the situation has changed, changed utterly.

Miliband - still disturbingly faltering, but at least on the front foot - hit a vital seam when he said this week that it was people power that had done for Murdoch's rancid title.

That's true, but it required the sustained efforts of the fearless Tom Watson MP, the Guardian's Nick Davies and others to keep this issue alive.

And that is what should be unleashed now.

The Murdoch game-plan is clear - use the crisis to push through a long-standing move to rationalise his print operation, squeezing the Sun to seven days a week while battening down the hatches and getting his mitts on BSkyB. Cameron's aim is to kick this into the long grass.

And Ed is, well, doing his best.

It can't be left to that.

This ought to be a tipping point.

The people who can make it so are the people, not the Parliament.

It is plain that it was the prospect of an advert-free News of the World being burnt publicly across the country tomorrow that forced Murdoch to pull the title.

In the age of Twitter and Facebook, calls for consumer or public action could spread in hours.

Now the public campaign needs to be sustained.

And while Brooks's sacking became the central focus on the day and an entire paper was closed to keep her in place, the issues go beyond that.

She represents the sordid nexus between the Murdoch empire, 10 Downing Street, the police and MPs who were for so long too cowed to do anything about it.

That entire corrupted set of relationships must be dragged into the light of day.

At the centre of the web is Murdoch himself, a mogul who has made no secret of his desire to bend politics and politicians to serve his interests - like Silvio Berlusconi, operating across continents.

For 40 years Murdoch has played a central role in the war against the left in this country, against the unions, against working people and their interests, and for a capitalism red in tooth and claw.

His papers savaged the Labour Party until the Blairite coterie took over and began seeking and destroying all that was labour.

Even as Ed Miliband rose to land some punches on David Cameron, half the Labour front bench were still ruminating on the banquet they had enjoyed at one of Murdoch's parties a couple of weeks earlier.

This is a moment when the basic line of division in the society stands exposed - hence attempts to bury that line as quickly as possible.

Something very big is happening. It comes after the MPs' expenses scandal and then the outrage at the bankers' bonuses and recklessness.

A third pillar of the Establishment is now cracking under public pressure and large numbers of people are beginning to glimpse the truth behind the facade.

The front page of the Financial Times, the world's business paper, captured something of the moment on Thursday.

It pictured Murdoch fleeing a press pack at a golf club in Utah.

The world's most powerful media baron telling the journos that he had "no comment" and looking for all the world like an aged mafioso taking refuge in Miami.

For that's what this is all about, when all is said and done.

A mafia at the top of our society - suborning, running protection rackets, making offers you can't refuse and occasionally rubbing out those who fall out of line.

So while it is good to see Cameron forced into announcing inquiries into the scandal, no inquiry headed by a British Establishment figure, judge or not, is going to address these questions.

It's not about some egregious excesses, it's about the whole rotten structure.

We have a long history of inquiries appointed in order to slow the pace of events and kick matters into.

I half expected a call for a royal commission - they usually take three years.

For progressives and the left, we cannot leave matters there.

These are circumstances where the left can find a resonance among much greater numbers of people.

We need to raise the banner high for the values and ideas which Murdoch sought to crush at Wapping.

I am discussing with many others across the spectrum how we can seize this time to shift the balance against an Establishment which is desperate to regroup, in order to drive through the structural adjustment of British society, support for militarism and a nasty populist bigotry - all the things that the News of the World specialised in.

Link: Morning Star

NoTW and HMA v Thomas Sheridan: Press Conference Report by James Doleman

NoTW and HMA v Thomas Sheridan: Press Conference Report by James Doleman.

A crowded press conference today heard from Aamer Anwar, Tommy Sheridan’s solicitor, and Tom Watson MP about a “dossier” of information they were handing over to Strathclyde police.

Amongst the documents it contained was; a page from the notebook of convicted investigator Glen Mulcaire which contained Tommy Sheridan’s personal details, including his mobile phone number and his “PIN code”, transcripts of evidence given by News of the World staff at last years perjury trial, and extracts from a “blue book” of instructions given to private detectives by News of the World journalists including Rebecca Brooks the current Chief Executive of News International (UK).

These documents, Mr Anwar claimed, showed that the jury in the Tommy Sheridan trial had, intentionally or unintentionally, been misled.

Included in the dossier given to police, but not the copy passed to the assembled journalists, was a document received by the solicitor nine months ago, which Mr Anwar claims list the names of “scores of Scots”, ranging from “football players to murder victims”, whose phones had also been hacked by Glen Mulcaire. Mr Anwar refused to reveal any of the names of the people involved, for “confidentiality reasons” or the source of the document. He did however call on Strathclyde police to inform the alleged victims and investigate their cases.

Mr Anwar also distributed a record of the evidence given by Bob Bird, Scottish editor of the News of the World, to the commission charged with discovering evidence for the Sheridan trial. At that hearing Mr Bird had stated that email exchanges between News International executives relating to the Sheridan case had been “lost” when they were archived in Mumbai, India and therefore could not be used in evidence. This, Mr Anwar said appeared to have been untrue as the emails had been discovered this year at News International’s Wapping headquarters. This he claimed has also led to the full facts of the case being concealed from the defence and, ultimately the jury.

Tom Watson MP then addressed the press. He said he had left the “media storm” in London because he believed the concealment of the emails and the extent of News of the World’s phone hacking may have “influenced the jury” adding that “Tommy Sheridan may be an innocent man”. This, Mr Watson stated was more important to highlight than any press interview in London.

Both men ended the conference by calling on Strathclyde police to conduct a “robust investigation” into possible perjury at the Tommy Sheridan trial and, as Tommy Sheridan was an MSP at the time of the alleged hacking, for the Scottish parliament to urgently consider undertaking an enquiry. They then left to deliver their dossier to Strathclyde police.

Shortly after the press conference concluded it was announced that the News of the World is to be closed.

James Doleman authored the daily blog reporting of the HMA v Sheridan trial in 2010.

Link: The Firm

Sheridan, hacking and the News of the World - James Doleman

Sheridan, hacking and the News of the World - James Doleman.

During the trial Sheridan’s defence argued he had been the victim of a plot by News International to “do him in”, and that this had involved Sheridan’s phone being hacked.

Evidence presented to the court showed that police had discovered Sheridan’s personal details in the notebooks of convicted phone hacker and News of the World contractor Glenn Mulcaire.

The defence had argued that information gathered from voicemail and a listening device in Sheridan’s car was used to manufacture evidence in the perjury case, including an alleged video tape of him apparently confessing to visiting a sex club in Manchester.

At Sheridan’s perjury trial, advocate-depute Alex Prentice QC dismissed the significance of phone hacking during his summation to the jury, claiming it was irrelevant to the charge and pointed to the testimony of Detective Chief Superintendent Williams. The police officer had told the jury he found “no evidence” that Sheridan’s voicemail had been accessed illegally.

Prentice also claimed that the contents of the McNeilage tape had not been gathered from any illegal voicemail access, and that no evidence existed of phone or voicemail interception.

The advocate-depute’s claim relied on the testimony of a police detective whose investigation concluded that just one person’s phone had ever been hacked by Mulcaire.

Andrew Coulson

At the trial News of the World editor Andrew Coulson testified to having no knowledge of Sheridan’s phone being hacked and that “no culture of hacking” existed at the newspaper. Coulson also claimed he was never in contact with Mulcaire and that he did not even know his name until Mulcaire had been arrested, telling the court: ”I never met him, spoke to him or emailed him.”

Coulson did however admit that the newspaper used Mulcaire’s company, 9 Consultancy, revealing that he had once asked a NotW department head to reduce the amount of money the company was being paid.

The perjury trial was also told by Coulson that his staff did not pay police officers, replying to the defence’s question with: “Not to my knowledge.”

However, the BBC recently reported that “e-mails, which appear to show that Mr Coulson authorised the payments, have been passed to the police”.

Has Coulson committed perjury? Whatever the answer to that question, another more complicated one arises: does it affect Sheridan’s own conviction for perjury?

Scottish legal writer “Lallands Peat Worrier” points out that Coulson was a witness for the defence and not the prosecution, making it more difficult to argue that Coulson’s evidence formed a key part of the Crown’s case against Sheridan.

However, News International employees Bob Bird and Douglas Wight, as well as NotW solicitor Kenneth Lang, were indeed Crown witnesses. All three were questioned in court about phone hacking.

If it also emerges that the Scottish News of the World intercepted voice messages, questions will be raised about Bird, Wight and Lang’s evidence.

Emails

One of the more contentious parts of Sheridan’s trial (as in many other trials) was the process of “discovery” of evidence by the defence.

One example was the claim made by Coulson, Bird and Lang. They all insisted that two years’ worth of email records belonging to News Group Newspapers had been lost when the data was allegedly transferred to India.

But in January, The Independent newspaper reported that those “lost” emails had now been found.

Bird was forced to apologise for, in his words, “inadvertently misleading the court”.

Given that these emails are the source of the new revelations about NotW’s phone hacking activities, Sheridan’s defence lawyers will surely demand to see them?

Conclusion

Crown witnesses during the perjury trial testified that any notion of Sheridan’s phone being hacked was “far-fetched” or rejected the assertion as mere “conspiracy theory”.

While under cross-examination, Coulson himself said that any claims Sheridan’s phone was being hacked can be true in “the parallel universe that exists only in [Sheridan's] mind”.

Now that widely reported new allegations say that NotW, under Coulson’s editorship, hacked so many people’s phones (including one belonging to a murdered child, phones belonging to the families of 7/7 bombing victims and the phones of dead soldiers) is it inconceivable that a politician suing the newspaper for slander would also be having his phone hacked?

More to the point, is it actually believable that NotW would not hack Sheridan’s phone?

If the jury at the perjury trial had been aware of this new information, would the verdict on Sheridan have been different?

One thing is for sure. Serious questions must be asked about Sheridan’s conviction for perjury.

Is his conviction unsound now that even more doubt has been raised about so many key witness?

Strathclyde Police and the Crown Office must now set to work immediately in finding out the truth.

Update

BBC Scotland is reporting:

“Witness statements at the Tommy Sheridan perjury trial are to be probed following new allegations in the News of the World phone hacking scandal.

The Crown Office has asked Strathclyde Police for a “preliminary assessment” and to hand any findings to prosecutors for possible further action.

Those who gave evidence at the trial included Bob Bird, Douglas Wight and former editor Andy Coulson.”

Link: lefthooked blog

Salma Yaqoob resigns as Respect Councillor for health reasons.

Salma Yaqoob resigns as Respect Councillor for health reasons.

Thursday, 7 July 2011

Time to take a step back

"This week I told party members, friends and supporters of my decision to resign as the Councillor for Sparkbrook. It has not been an easy decision, but it is one that I have had to make in the interests of my health.

For some time now those close to me have been very aware that I have been battling with health issues. Unfortunately over the past 12 months it has taken a turn for the worse. I have found it increasingly difficult to keep up with my very busy schedule, and to satisfactorily fulfil the commitments that my role demands.

As a result of my worsening health I simply cannot continue to represent Sparkbrook in the way that I think its people deserve.

I was elected as a councillor in 2005, and again in 2010, and I have always felt it was a real privilege to work for Sparkbrook. There are so many examples of initiative and commitment, and so many people who come together to achieve better things for the community.

To all those who I have worked with over the years, and to those who have campaigned, supported and voted for me, I offer my sincere and humble gratitude.

I am proud of our work as Respect Party councillors since 2005; proud that we stood up to the parties of war and big business; and proud of the representation we gave to people who had been let down by the big parties who took them for granted.

For the time being, I have to take a step back and give myself the time and space to concentrate on regaining my health. However, I am not retiring from politics just yet! I still have things to say and - health permitting - I hope to continue with occasional media appearances, writing and public speaking.

I may have been forced to resign as a councillor. But I remain as committed as ever to the struggle for a world free of war, racism and poverty".

Link: Salma Yaqoob blog

After the Election – where now for Respect?

After the Election - whre now for Respect?

A letter to Respect Party members from the National Secretary
Dear Comrades,

On Saturday 21st May the Respect Party’s National Council met to discuss the prospects for Respect after the recent set of elections At the meeting we started a discussion but we now hope will now continue with a debate throughout the party and with our many supporters over the coming months.

Electoral politics is a tough game and there is no hiding from results. The reality of our results on May 5th was that we had a very disappointing night.

It appears clear now, with the exception of Tower Hamlets with its peculiar local circumstances, that the electoral space that we have sought to occupy in recent years has been closing since the final few weeks of the 2010 General Election campaign. As voters were faced with a stark choice between Labour and Tory governments most working people – many of whom had spent the previous few years disillusioned with Blair and then Brown - returned to the Labour fold. With the ConDems in power, and viciously cutting essential public services, that process has continued – and is likely to accelerate as the cuts begin to bite.

In Respect, we may have hoped to have picked up disillusioned Lib-Dem voters in some areas – but the reality is that for a number for reasons we didn’t. In most places our votes were declining or very small indeed – despite having hardworking and respect candidates and positive campaigns getting a good response on the doorstep. Sadly those positive responses did not translate into votes. It may be tempting to think that had we worked harder or campaigning in a different way the outcomes may have been different but the reality is that respect was swimming against the over-whelming current of a national trend which we are simply too small to overcome at the present time.

In Birmingham Sparkbrook the mass return to Labour was enough to swamp even the excellent vote of our well-respected and excellent local councillor Mohammed Ishtiaq. With 3,413 votes he was only 100 short of the total that saw him elected in 2007 but that was not enough to prevent Labour taking the council seat.

Even in Glasgow where George Galloway received lots of promising signals we were unable to cross the 5% threshold and get into the Parliament. It was nice to beat the LibDems in the city but beating the LibDems is no longer a significant achievement these days (the LibDem collapse being was one of the very positive outcomes of election night.)

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all our candidates, their agents and our campaign teams for their hard work during the elections. Once again we proved that Respect members and supporters can never be faulted for their commitment and energy.

Nonetheless we need to address the issues we face as a small party honestly and move forward together .

At the National Council number of different proposals were made for the future – which I don’t intend to refer to here – but the various proposers will flesh out and put them in writing as part of a national debate to be carried on the website, on this email list and in the pages of the next edition of Respect Quarterly (which we expect to send out in mid-June having extended the deadline for articles). What the NC members present did all agree on was that we didn’t want to risk losing the coherent body of anti-imperialist, anti-racist, pro-investment ideas that have become associated with Respect. We also agreed that carrying on as if nothing has changed was not an option.

The next steps:

1. The next issue of the Respect Quarterly will carry articles analysing the election and making suggestions for the way forward. Articles will also be posted on the website. A view from Tower Hamlets written by National Chair Abjol Miah can already be read at http://www.voterespect.org/2011/05/tower-hamlets-needs-respect.html . Responses to these articles will be invited and published where appropriate on the website or in the autumn edition.

2. Respect will hold a series of regional forums for all members and supporters to discuss the way forward. These will be held before the summer where possible. We will publicise these forums when the venue have been booked and the dates arranged. We urge as many member as possible to try and attend these events.

3. The National Council will discuss the outcome from these forums at our next meeting on September 10th . We will then report back to the membership as a whole.

Yours in peace and solidarity
Clive Searle, National Secretary

Neil Williams:
A long overdue debate and better late than never. Respect are right to review their current position and have made a positive step in the right direction which others on the Left should follow. This blog will be posting articles on this issue in the near future. What are your views?

Link: Respect Party

Tommy Sheridan: "We were Tommy Sheridan's loyal comrades, not his harem"

Tommy Sheridan: "We were Tommy Sheridan's loyal comrades, not his harem" by Anne Edmonds in The Guardian.

The Scottish socialist leader was anything but the misogynist his critics claim he was.

I'm surprised that Julie Bindel should accept the claims that the controversy surrounding Tommy Sheridan was "about women, not workers" (Sexism, not socialism, 28 January). Rosie Kane, a former Scottish Socialist party colleague of Sheridan's, wants to "rid the left of male misogynists" and describes SSP women as "a harem of adoring female supporters". But portraying socialist men as woman-haters insults women like me who campaigned alongside Tommy to advance socialism, not as part of a fan club.

Kane says Gail Sheridan was used by her husband Tommy as a "human shield". Because Gail dresses better than most socialist women it is easy for the media to present her as a bimbo when, under the makeup, she emerges as a strong woman and committed socialist. Gail would not allow herself to be "used".

I worked in the parliamentary offices of the SSP and found Tommy, off the political platform, was a quiet man who got on with his work. In company he was more listener than life and soul of the party – a far cry from his tabloid image as a vain, philandering "champagne socialist". He treats all decent people with respect, irrespective of gender.

I was at the sentencing on 26 January along with Tommy's family. The hundreds of supporters inside and outside the Glasgow high court demonstrated the loyalty felt towards him. We know prison will not break his spirit – indeed, once prisoners are enfranchised, his presence in Barlinnie should increase the socialist vote considerably.

I was an SSP member from 1998 until 2006. Carolyn Leckie – whom Bindel referred to as giving evidence against Sheridan – describes "women flocking around him like disciples and men hero-worshipping and protecting him". But our loyalty was based on a mature appreciation of Tommy's character and political talent.

Bindel mentions Catriona Grant, who also gave evidence in the trial. I was at the SSP conference in 2005 when Grant, expected as party chair to appear impartial, announced the result of the contest to replace Tommy as co-convener. Grant stunned the audience by declaring: "Colin Fox [then Tommy's ally] has, unfortunately, been elected." So I was not surprised when a new faction within the SSP was formed – the United Left. It claimed to be based on "inclusiveness", but membership was invitation only, and no pro-Tommy comrades were invited.

Grant claims in the article: "Whenever we would go to meetings we would be shouted at and verbally abused by some male supporters." I found this assertion astonishing, as the only verbal abuse I experienced came from some of the women featured in Bindel's article.

Leckie says: "The left now needs to incorporate feminism." While recognising that gender inequality remains a serious issue, this is a strange primary aim when the British people are suffering from unprecedented attacks by a capitalist government. A party where women were well-represented and confident participants has been destroyed. Yet Kane believes "all we have been through has been worth it". I disagree.

Link: The Guardian

Egypt: The Regime Digs in Deeper by Robert Fisk

Egypt: The Regime Digs in Deeper by Robert Fisk in The Independent.

Blood turns brown with age. Revolutions do not. Vile rags now hang in a corner of the square, the last clothes worn by the martyrs of Tahrir: a doctor, a lawyer among them, a young woman, their pictures strewn above the crowds, the fabric of the T-shirts and trousers stained the colour of mud. But yesterday, the people honoured their dead in their tens of thousands for the largest protest march ever against President Hosni Mubarak's dictatorship, a sweating, pushing, shouting, weeping, joyful people, impatient, fearful that the world may forget their courage and their sacrifice. It took three hours to force our way into the square, two hours to plunge through a sea of human bodies to leave. High above us, a ghastly photomontage flapped in the wind: Hosni Mubarak's head superimposed upon the terrible picture of Saddam Hussein with a noose round his neck.

Uprisings don't follow timetables. And Mubarak will search for some revenge for yesterday's renewed explosion of anger and frustration at his 30-year rule. For two days, his new back-to-work government had tried to portray Egypt as a nation slipping back into its old, autocratic torpor. Gas stations open, a series of obligatory traffic jams, banks handing out money – albeit in suitably small amounts – shops gingerly doing business, ministers sitting to attention on state television as the man who would remain king for another five months lectured them on the need to bring order out of chaos – his only stated reason for hanging grimly to power.

But Issam Etman proved him wrong. Shoved and battered by the thousands around him, he carried his five-year- old daughter Hadiga on his shoulders. "I am here for my daughter," he shouted above the protest. "It is for her freedom that I want Mubarak to go. I am not poor. I run a transport company and a gas station. Everything is shut now and I'm suffering, but I don't care. I am paying my staff from my own pocket. This is about freedom. Anything is worth that." And all the while, the little girl sat on Issam Etman's shoulders and stared at the epic crowds in wonderment; no Harry Potter extravaganza would match this.

Many of the protesters – so many were flocking to the square yesterday evening that the protest site had overflowed onto the Nile river bridges and the other squares of central Cairo – had come for the first time. The soldiers of Egypt's Third Army must have been outnumbered 40,000 to one and they sat meekly on their tanks and armoured personnel carriers, smiling nervously as old men and youths and young women sat around their tank tracks, sleeping on the armour, heads on the great steel wheels; a military force turned to impotence by an army of dissent. Many said they had come because they were frightened; because they feared the world was losing interest in their struggle, because Mubarak had not yet left his palace, because the crowds had grown smaller in recent days, because some of the camera crews had left for other tragedies and other dictatorships, because the smell of betrayal was in the air. If the Republic of Tahrir dries up, then the national awakening is over. But yesterday proved that the revolution is alive.

Its mistake was to underestimate the ability of the regime to live too, to survive, to turn on its tormentors, to switch off the cameras and harass the only voice of these people – the journalists – and to persuade those old enemies of revolution, the "moderates" whom the West loves, to debase their only demand. What is five more months if the old man goes in September? Even Amr Moussa, most respected of the crowds' favourite Egyptians, turns out to want the old boy to carry on to the end. And woeful, in truth, is the political understanding of this innocent but often untutored mass.

Regimes grow iron roots. When the Syrians left Lebanon in 2005, the Lebanese thought that it was enough to lop off the head, to get the soldiers and the intelligence officers out of their country. But I remember the astonishment with which we all discovered the depth of Syria's talons. They lay deep in the earth of Lebanon, to the very bedrock. The assassinations went on. And so, too, it is in Egypt. The Ministry of Interior thugs, the state security police, the dictator who gives them their orders, are still in operation – and if one head should roll, there will be other heads to be pasted onto the familiar portrait to send those cruel men back into the streets.

There are some in Egypt – I met one last night, a friend of mine – who are wealthy and genuinely support the democracy movement and want Mubarak to go but are fearful that if he steps now from his palace, the military will be able to impose their own emergency laws before a single reform has been discussed. "I want to get reforms in place before the man leaves," my friend said. "If he goes now, the new leader will be under no obligation to carry out reforms. These should be agreed to now and done quickly – it's the legislature, the judiciary, the constitutional changes, the presidential terms that matter. As soon as Mubarak leaves, the men with brass on their shoulders will say: 'It's over – go home!' And then we'll have a five-year military council. So let the old man stay till September."

But it's easy to accuse the hundreds of thousands of democracy protestors of naivety, of simple-mindedness, of over-reliance on the Internet and Facebook. Indeed, there is growing evidence that "virtual reality" became reality for the young of Egypt, that they came to believe in the screen rather than the street – and that when they took to the streets, they were deeply shocked by the state violence and the regime's continued, brutal, physical strength. Yet for people to taste this new freedom is overwhelming. How can a people who have lived under dictatorship for so long plan their revolution? We in the West forget this. We are so institutionalized that everything in our future is programmed. Egypt is a thunderstorm without direction, an inundation of popular expression which does not fit neatly into our revolutionary history books or our political meteorology.

All revolutions have their "martyrs", and the faces of Ahmed Bassiouni and young Sally Zahrani and Moahmoud Mohamed Hassan float on billboards around the square, along with pictures of dreadfully mutilated heads with the one word "unidentified" printed beside them with appalling finality. If the crowds abandon Tahrir now, these dead will also have been betrayed. And if we really believe the regime-or-chaos theory which still grips Washington and London and Paris, the secular, democratic, civilized nature of this great protest will also be betrayed. The deadly Stalinism of the massive Mugamma government offices, the tattered green flag of the pathetic Arab League headquarters, the military-guarded pile of the Egyptian Museum with the golden death mask of Tutankhamen – a symbol of Egypt's mighty past – buried deep into its halls; these are the stage props of the Republic of Tahrir.

Week three – day sixteen – lacks the romance and the promise of the Day of Rage and the great battles against the Egyptian Ministry of Interior goons and the moment, just over a week ago, when the army refused Mubarak's orders to crush, quite literally, the people in the square. Will there be a week six or a day 32? Will the cameras still be there? Will the people? Will we? Yesterday proved our predictions wrong again. But they will have to remember that the iron fingernails of this regime have long ago grown into the sand, deeper than the pyramids, more powerful than ideology. We have not seen the last of this particular creature. Nor of its vengeance.

News from Aljazzeera

Workers to continue Egypt strikes

Live blog Feb 10 - Egypt protests

US escalates pressure on Egypt

Stop Press: Mubarak on the brink of departure - The Independent

Link: The Independent

Tommy Sheridan: News International finds 'lost' emails that could provide evidence in phone-hacking case

Tommy Sheridan: News International finds 'lost' emails that could provide evidence in phone-hacking case.
By Cahal Milmo, Chief Reporter, and Martin Hickman in The Independent.

A "lost" hoard of emails sent by senior executives in Rupert Murdoch's newspaper empire at the height of the phone-hacking scandal has been found, The Independent has learnt.

Detectives from the Metropolitan Police are now expected to examine the database of emails in their renewed search for News of the World journalists who may have hacked into mobile phone messages or hired private detectives to do so in breach of privacy laws.

A senior editor at News International, the UK newspaper arm of Mr Murdoch's News Corporation media empire, claimed in a high-profile criminal trial last year that "lots of emails" from editors and other staff had gone missing in a botched data transfer to India.

However, The Independent has established that not only is the database intact but it apparently contains a full record of email traffic between the company's senior staff.

The archive, covering 2005 and 2006 when the News of the World was illegally listening to the messages of aides to Prince William and other public figures, will open a window onto the Sunday paper's newsgathering operations and those of Mr Murdoch's other titles.

Scotland Yard last week promised it would leave "no stone unturned" in its new inquiry into allegations that phone hacking at the News of the World spread far beyond its Royal Editor, Clive Goodman, whose snooping on Prince William led to him being jailed for four months in 2007. A raid on the offices of the private eye Glen Mulcaire, also jailed, uncovered several thousand phone numbers of potential hacking victims and 91 PIN codes, but detectives limited their inquiries to Goodman and Mulcaire.

Confirmation that the UK database of all emails does, in fact, exist will give the new police team no excuses for ignoring a data trail that may yield fresh clues to the investigation.

Saying it was determined to root out wrongdoing, News International last week passed detectives significant new evidence about the NOTW's sacked head of news Ian Edmondson, prompting the Met to launch a new inquiry. It is being run by Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers.

The claim that emails had been lost was made by the News of the World's Scotland editor Bob Bird during the perjury trial of the former Scottish Socialist Party leader Tommy Sheridan in November. Giving evidence on oath, he said that many emails sought by the defence had gone missing while being transferred to India.

The claim prompted the Information Commissioner's Office to launch an inquiry into whether the apparent loss of the emails broke the law governing the handling of sensitive data and its transfer abroad. If News International had broken the Data Protection Act it would have faced a fresh civil case, alongside civil actions brought by individuals who suspect their phones were hacked, and a £500,000 fine.

However, in a letter to the Information Commissioner's Office, lawyers at News International's Wapping headquarters told the ICO's investigation team that it had archived emails and that none had been transferred to India.

As well as confirming the presence of a potentially vast data store, the disclosure – confirmed by the newspaper group to The Independent – has other potentially serious consequences.

Mr Sheridan's team is expected to use the disclosure as part of an appeal against Mr Sheridan's conviction for lying on oath in his earlier defamation case against the NOTW which led to him being jailed for three years.

Secondly, if, as expected the ICO confirms News International is telling the truth, it could forward the transcript of Mr Bird's testimony and its inquiry to its lawyers who will decide whether "in the public interest" to contact other prosecuting authorities.

A source at News International said Mr Bird had unintentionally given the court inaccurate evidence, but insisted the defence team had received all the relevant documents. In a brief official statement, the news group said: "Like many companies, we have an email archiving system in place." Mr Bird, who joined News International in 2000, did not respond to a request for comment.

Aamer Anwar, Sheridan's solicitor, said: "This is unacceptable. We were told repeatedly by Mr Bird in these proceedings that this material was lost in Mumbai. Now we are told it is in the UK. My client would not accept an explanation that there was a misunderstanding. We will look closely at any response from News International and are considering a complaint to the police and the Crown Office. If there is evidence information was intentionally not supplied we would expect criminal proceedings."

Labour MP Tom Watson, who has campaigned for a new police force to look into hacking, said: "If the jury in the Sheridan trial was misled then there should be an urgent review of the case. This week the Prime Minister told the Commons that the inquiry should 'follow the evidence wherever it leads'. We now know it leads to a data warehouse in London containing all News International emails from 2005 onwards."

Information overload

* The digital age has brought with it an unforeseen dilemma for commercial companies, from banks to media giants: just what do they do with the unimaginably vast quantities of data that they produce and receive each year? According to one estimate, 35 zettabytes of information – equivalent to the storage capacity of 2,625 billion iPads – will be generated worldwide in 2011.

Commercial lawyers say this avalanche of data presents the commercial sector with particular problems because of the thicket of legislation – from the Data Protection Act to rules governing the financial sector – that means nearly all of it must be kept and archived in an accessible manner.

The dangers of failing to properly store information such as internal emails was highlighted in 2009 when Barclays Bank was heavily criticised for allowing key documents in a dispute with a customer, including emails, to be destroyed. Although the banking giant ultimately won the case, the judge ordered the amount of costs it could claim to be halved.

Companies have traditionally relied on "taping" technology or hard discs, often housed in basement computer rooms, to back up their data. But increasingly companies are moving to online storage, which allows information to be transmitted in vast quantities via the internet to remote servers around the world.

Tracey Stretton, legal consultant for Kroll Ontrack, a data management and recovery company, said: "It is increasingly vital that companies not only store the information they generate, but that they do so in a manner that allows that data to be searched effectively should the need arise.

"If, for example, legal proceedings arise a number of years after an event, then there will be a reasonable expectation that any relevant information should be readily accessible.

"The quantity of information that technology allows to be stored is extraordinary – a single USB data stick can hold the equivalent of 20 tonnes of printed paper."

According to one estimate, the electronically stored information (ESI) industry is now worth £150bn a year.

Cahal Milmo and Martin Hickman

Mystery of missing emails

* What Bob Bird, editor of the Scottish News of the World, told a pre-trial hearing on 30 June 2010

"I did have a look at the email system but it is, frankly, a mess, our system. Our archived emails have been shipped to Mumbai and it's difficult to get anything that is more than six months old. I searched out emails regarding the police, which I'm still trying to discover where they actually are and how you open the things. I've had IT at it for a few weeks now..."

"... As I say, unfortunately, our emails get automatically deleted and archived after about six months now and our archive is in Mumbai, so I couldn't have searched [those] emails..."

"...I've been having a look trying to find anything that might be relevant. As I say, we've had a problem..."

During the trial in November, he told the High Court that "many emails had been lost when they were being moved to an archive in India".

* What News International subsequently told the Information Commissioner's data inquiry

As a result of Mr Bird's comments, the Information Commissioner's Office launched an investigation into whether News International's apparent archiving of emails abroad and their supposed loss breached the Data Protection Act. The ICO contacted News International and asked it to explain its position. Lawyers for News International then wrote to the headquarters of the Information Commissioner's Office in Wilmslow, Cheshire, stating that it archived emails in the UK and had not sent any to India.

News International has confirmed to The Independent that this is the case.

So Bob Bird, editor of the Scottish News of the World, gave incorrect information(!) at the Tommy Sherdian trial! (and but for the Information Commissioner's Office we would not know this).

Link: A revelation that gives hope to Tommy Sheridan
Link: The Independent

Former MP George Galloway 'offered payout over hacking'

Former MP George Galloway 'offered payout over hacking' - BBC News.

Former MP George Galloway has told the BBC he is being offered "substantial sums of money" by the News of the World after his phone was allegedly hacked.

He said police told him they had evidence he was targeted by a private investigator working for the paper who was jailed for hacking in 2007.

Mr Galloway is now taking legal action for breach of privacy.

A News of the World spokeswoman would not comment on his claim he had been offered money ahead of a court date.

In 2007, the paper's royal editor, Clive Goodman, and a private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, were jailed for intercepting the voicemails of royal aides.

Last week, the Metropolitan Police launched a fresh investigation into phone-hacking after receiving what it called "significant new information".

The force has been accused by a number of public figures - including former deputy prime minister Lord Prescott - of failing to carry out thorough inquiries in the past.

Court date

But speaking to The Politics Show, Mr Galloway, former Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, said: "The police were exemplary in their conduct of my case.

"A very senior officer came to my then office in Parliament and told me that in the raid on Glenn Mulcaire's premises, they had found evidence which suggested he had been hacking my telephone.

"I began a civil action for breach of privacy. I have a court date some months hence.

"The News of the World are busily offering me substantial sums of money."

Despite his praise for the Met Police, Mr Galloway said there did seem to be "questions that need answering" about the investigation.

"It's odd, for example, that they came to my office to tell me, but walked past the office of the deputy prime minister of the day and a minister, Chris Bryant, without telling them," he said.

"There seem to be questions about why they sat on evidence but did not pursue it, and did not pursue additional evidence which the News of the World have now handed to them."

In September 2010, when he first launched his legal action, the News of the World said it had "absolutely no knowledge or evidence that Mr Galloway's voicemail was accessed".

A number of public figures are taking action against the newspaper over allegations that their phones were hacked.

At the time of Goodman and Mulcaire's conviction, the paper's editor, Andy Coulson, resigned, although he said he had no idea that phone hacking had been going on.

Mr Coulson subsequently became David Cameron's chief of communications, but resigned from that post earlier this month, saying the media storm surrounding ongoing hacking claims had prevented him from doing the job properly.

Link: BBC News

Tommy Sheridan's solicitor: newspaper hacked my phone messages

Solicitor Aamer Anwar.
Tommy Sheridan's solicitor: newspaper hacked my phone messages by Neil Mackay from heraldscotland.com.

High-profile Scottish solicitor Aamer Anwar is to report the News Of The World to the police tomorrow claiming the tabloid newspaper tried to hack his phone.

Anwar is the latest in a long list of public figures who claim the paper was involved in trying to illegally access their voicemail.

The solicitor, who represented Tommy Sheridan during his perjury trial, said he was contacted by Vodafone shortly before the court case began last year, warned that there had been an attempt to access his messages and told he should change his PIN number.

Anwar has been working with Mark Lewis, the English lawyer representing a number of public figures and celebrities who claim the News Of The World tried to hack their phones. The pair have also compiled a list of 20 high-profile Scots – believed to be politicians, celebrities and sports figures – who say they are victims of tabloid hacking.

The phone-hacking scandal is threatening to engulf Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, News International. Former News Of The World editor Andy Coulson has already stepped down as Prime Minister David Cameron’s spin doctor, and Murdoch abandoned a trip to Davos last week for the World Economic Forum to fly to London to deal with the situation.

Lewis said the attempted hacking of Anwar was “hugely significant”. The newspaper has maintained that phone-hacking was down to one “rogue” reporter, Clive Goodman, the newspaper’s royal editor who was convicted in 2007 of plotting to intercept voicemail left for royal aides. Calls had been made to access messages for senior staff working for Prince Charles and both Princes William and Harry.

Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator, was also jailed. He had hacked the phones of supermodel Elle Macpherson, Simon Hughes MP and publicist Max Clifford, who sued the newspaper and got a settlement believed to be £1 million. It was later established that Mulcaire also had the telephone details of Tommy Sheridan.

Lewis said that after the trial, News International pledged zero tolerance for any attempted hacking. “If the hacking (of Anwar) occurred, it shows endemic behaviour is still happening and lessons have not been learned.”

He is representing a number of prominent people in hacking claims against the newspaper, including TV star Chris Tarrant and Kieren Fallon, the Irish jockey. Sven-Goran Eriksson, the former England manager and his agent Athole Still, from Scotland, have been working with him to establish if they were hacked.

Among other celebrities not represented by Lewis who accuse the News Of The World of attempting to hack them are actress Sienna Miller and Brian Paddick, the openly gay former deputy assistant commissioner of Scotland Yard.

A number of journalists working for rival newspapers have also engaged Lewis, who added that he was getting “calls all the time” from prospective clients who had either been hacked or were concerned attempts had been made to hack them.

Lewis said of the latest accusations about attempted phone-hacking on Anwar: “It undermines the essential ability of a client to speak to their lawyer without being listened to.”

He said he believed that some hacking was done to gather information that would help assist the newspaper in libel trials, but that it was mostly conducted to “fish for stories”.

Lewis added: “There was no public interest to what was going on.”

Lewis added that people had lost their jobs when staff working for celebrities were wrongly accused by their employers of leaking sensitive information to the press which had been obtained by hacking.

A close friend of Aamer Anwar said last night: “It’s not that he is outraged by this – actually, he thinks this is par for the course. He kind of expected it to happen.”

Link: heraldscotland.com

Protesters back on Egypt streets - Aljazeera

Protesters back on Egypt streets - Aljazeera.

The ruling party's headquarters in the northern Egyptian city of Luxor has been torched as tens of thousands of protesters return to the streets in several cities following overnight demonstrations staged in defience of a curfew.

Thousands of demonstrators have gathered in Tahrir Square in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, on Saturday, shouting "Go away, go away!".

Similar crowds were gathering in the cities of Alexandria and Suez, Al Jazeera's correspondents reported.

In Alexandria, our correspondent Rawya Rageh reported that scores of marchers were calling on Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak to step down.

"They are calling for regime change, not cabinet change," Rageh said.

She said that they were blocking traffic and shouting "Illegitimate, illegitimate!"

The Reuters news agency reported that police had fired live ammunition at protesters. Independent confirmation of that report is awaited.

In Suez, Al Jazeera's Jamal ElShayyal reported that 1,000-2,000 protesters had gathered, and that the military was not confronting them.

ElShayyal quoted a military officer as saying that troops would "not fire a single bullet on Egyptians", regardless of where the orders to do so come from.

The officer also said the only solution to the current unrest was "for Mubarak to leave".

ElShayyal said that 1,700 public workers in Suez had gone on an indefinite strike seeking Mubarak's resignation.

The latest protests reflected popular discontent with Mubarak's midnight address, where he announced that he was dismissing his government but remaining in power.

The several hundred protesters in Tahrir Square demonstrated in full view of the army, which had been deployed in the city to quell the popular unrest sweeping the Middle East's most populous Muslim country since January 25.

They repeatedly shouted that their intentions were peaceful.

The road leading from Tahrir Square to the parliament and cabinet buildings has been blocked by the military, the Associated Press news agency reported.

Al Jazeera's Jane Dutton, reporting from Cairo, said the normally bustling city looked more like a warzone early on Saturday morning.

Tanks have been patrolling the streets of the capital since early in the morning, and a statement from the Egyptian armed forces asked citizens to respect the curfew and to avoid congregating in large groups.

An extended curfew has now been ordered, running from 4pm to 8am local time, in Cairo and other major cities, by the military.

State television is also reporting that all school and university exams have been postponed.

Rising death toll

Cities across Egypt witnessed unprecedented protests on Friday, with tens of thousands of protesters taking to the streets after noon prayers calling for an end to Mubarak's 30-year rule.

The number of people killed in protests is reported to be in the scores, with at least 23 deaths confirmed in Alexandria, and at least 27 confirmed in Suez, with a further 22 deaths in Cairo.

Al Jazeera's Rageh in Alexandria said that the bodies of 23 protesters had been received at the local morgue, some of them brutally disfigured.

She added that human rights activists had reported that a further 13 bodies were present at the general hospital.

ElShayyal, our correspondent in Suez confirmed 27 bodies were received at the morgue in Suez, while Dan Nolan, our correspondent in Cairo, confirmed that 22 bodies were present at a morgue in Cairo.

More than 1,000 were also wounded in Friday's violent protests, which occurred in Cairo and Suez, in addition to Alexandria.

Dutton, in Cairo, said the number of the people on the streets "increased after president Hosni Mubarak's speech shortly after midnight".

Regarding the situation in the capital on Saturday morning, she said "there is broken glass everywhere ... a lot of the burnt out shells of the police cars have been removed but you are aware that there were hours and hours of skirmishes on the streets of the capital city [last night]".

The ruling National Democratic Party's headquarters in the capital is still ablaze, more than 12 hours after it was set alight by protesters.

The Egyptian army says that it has been able to secure the neighbouring museum of antiquities from the threat of fire and looting, averting the possible loss of thousands of priceless artefacts.

Armoured personnel carriers remain stationed around the British and US embassies, as well as at the state television station.

Some mobile phone networks resumed service in the capital on Saturday, after being shut down by authorities on Friday. Internet services remain cut, and landline usage limited.

Authorities had blocked internet, mobile phone and SMS services in order to disrupt planned demonstrations.

'Mobs' and 'criminals'

Maged Reda Boutros, a member of the ruling National Democratic Party, told Al Jazeera that the political regime in Egypt was "admitting" that it was not meeting the expectations of the people, and that was why the cabinet was resigning.

"It shows a response to the demands of the people," he said. He alleged that the protests have been taken over by "mobs" from the "lower part of the society", who are now engaged in "burning, looting and shooting". "Now it has turned from a noble cause to a criminal cause," he said, saying that most of those involved in the protests were criminals. He said that half of those killed are members of the security forces, who died while acting in self defence. "People should wait and see what's going to happen. But if they continue doing protests and letting those criminals loose in a large city of 17m people ... we cannot play with the stability of the country." Mohamed ElBaradei, a leading opposition figure, told Al Jazeera that protests would continue until the president steps down. He also stressed that the political "system" will have to change in Egypt before the country can move forward. He termed president Mubarak's speech "disappointing", and called on him to resign. The former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency also expressed "disappointment" with the US reaction to the protests, though he did stress that any change would have to come from "inside Egypt". He said that Mubarak should put in place an interim government that would arrange free and fair elections. ElBaradei added that he was not aware of his reported house arrest. Friday's demonstrations involving tens of thousands of people were the biggest and bloodiest in four consecutive days of protests against Mubarak's government.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

Protesters back on Egypt streets

Al Jazeera English: Live Stream

Egypt's protests on Twitter

Link: Aljazeera