The stench of corruption

How bad do things have to get before the people of the UK say enough? The latest examples of sleazeballs on the take are bad but not a surprise. The remark, “I may have evaded the rules but I haven’t broken them,’ by one of the '3 Lords a Leeching' does take the biscuit. What is more disturbing is the extent to which our political leaders are in bed with big business. All the talk of tackling tax avoidance needs to be viewed in this light. The Murdoch connection with our politicians was well and truly aired throughout the Leveson Inquiry. Similar cosy arrangements exist today with Google for example. 

“Rachel Whetstone, Google’s top global spinner, is married to David Cameron’s old barefoot guru Steve Hilton. She used to be director of communications for Tory leader Michael Howard and , before that, was Cameron’s deputy in the PR department at Carlton TV. The PM is godfather to her younger son.

Naomi Gummer, one of Google’s main ‘public policy’ executives, meanwhile, is the daughter of Tory PR adviser Lord Chadlington, the president of Cameron’s local constituency association. Dave and Sam Cam attended her wedding a year ago, as did the then culture secretary Jeremy Hunt –whose special adviser she was before taking Google’s shilling. Heading in the opposite direction, Google’s former European PR woman Amy Fisher now advises justice secretary Chris Grayling.

With Google, as once with Murdoch, the Cameroons have followed where the Blairites led. Sarah Hunter, the Rebekah Brooks-lookalike who was Tony Blair’s chief adviser on media policy at No.10, went on to become Google’s ‘head of UK public policy’. DJ Collins, a Whitehall ‘spad’ of the Blair era (and close friend of D. Miliband), has in recent years been Google’s European director of communications. 

With so many chums in Whitehall, is it any wonder Google chairman Eric Schmidt is still welcome at Downing Street as a member of Dave’s council of business advisers?” Private Eye No 1341.

Should any innocents out there still think all of this is irrelevant consider the way ‘eminent’ political leaders have appeared on the airwaves recently exhorting us to accept internet intrusion (Reid/Howard), or to arm various factions around the world (Riffkind). All three of them are corporate whores - Reid and Howard for the security industry, Riffkind for an arms company. 

These creeps are not an isolated example. This practice is widespread and is tantamount to corruption. It is this corruption which is all pervasive in our democracy. It goes from individual slimeballs on the take to corporations receiving incredible tax deals and ‘sweeteners’ not to mention the old boy network which has greased many a palm.

We used to look at corruption in other parts of the world and consider our system was better. 

Not any more. 

Guantanamo Hunger Striker’s Open Letter

Emily Davison

It is the anniversary of the death of Emily Davison. She was the suffragette who died trying to pin colours to the King’s horse in the Derby. It is the centenary of her death. 

In the last decade of that century there has been created by the Americans an excrescence so vile its very existence undermines all their hollow words about freedom, democracy and the rule of law. As you read the following, remember that the suffragettes were subjected to force-feeding too.

30 May 2013

From: Detainee(s) on hunger strike in Naval Base, Guantanamo Bay

An open letter to my military doctor: allow independent medical access

Dear Doctor,

I do not wish to die, but I am prepared to run the risk that I may end up doing so, because I am protesting the fact that I have been locked up for more than a decade, without a trial, subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment and denied access to justice. I have no other way to get my message across. You know that the authorities have taken everything from me.

For this reason, I am respectfully requesting that independent medical professionals be allowed into Guantanamo to treat me, and that they be given full access to my medical records, in order to determine the best treatment for me.

You claim to be acting according to your duties as a physician to save my life. This is against my expressed wish. As you should know, I am competent to make my own decisions about medical treatment. When I try to refuse the treatments you offer; you force them upon me, sometimes violently. For those reasons, you are in violation of the ethics of your profession, as the American Medical Association 1 and World Medical Association 2 have made clear.

My decision to go on hunger strike and to endure semi-starvation for over 100 days was not entered into lightly. I am doing it because it is literally the only method I have to make the outside world pay attention. Your response to my carefully considered decision cannot logically lead to the conclusion that your only goal is to save my life--your actions over recent months do not support such an inference.

For those of us being force-fed against our will, the process of having a tube repeatedly forced up our noses and down our throats in order to keep us in a state of semi-starvation is extremely painful and the conditions under which it is done are abusive. If you truly had my best medical interests at heart, you could have talked to me like a human being about my choices, instead of treating me in a way that feels like I am being punished for something.

You must know that your professional overreaction to my participation in the hunger strike has been condemned by no lesser an authority than the United Nations; the Special Rapporteur on Health has stated unequivocally that "health care personnel may not apply undue pressure of any sort on individuals who have opted for the extreme recourse of a hunger strike, nor is it acceptable to use threats of forced feeding or other types of physical or psychological coercion against individuals who have voluntarily decided to go on a hunger strike. 

In any regard, I cannot trust your advice, because you are responsible to your superior military officers who require you to treat me by means unacceptable to me, and you put your duty to them above your duty to me as a doctor. Your dual loyalties make trusting you impossible.

For these reasons, our present doctor-patient relationship cannot contribute to resolving the threats to my health that this hunger strike is engendering. You may be able to keep me alive for a long time in a permanently debilitated state. But with so many of us on hunger strike, you are attempting a treatment experiment on an unprecedented scale. And you cannot be certain that human error will not creep in and result in one or more of us dying.

Your superiors, up to and including President Obama, their Commander-in-Chief, recognise that my death or that of another hunger striker here would have serious undesirable consequences. You have been ordered to guarantee - with absolute certainty - my survival, but it is beyond your (or perhaps any doctor's) ability to do that.

I have some sympathy for your impossible position. Whether you continue in the military or return to civilian practice, you will have to live with what you have done and not done here at Guantanamo for the rest of your life. Going forward, you can make a difference. You can choose to stop actively contributing to the abusive conditions I am currently enduring.

I am asking you only to raise with your superiors my urgent request that I be allowed access to examination by and independent medical advice from a doctor or doctors chosen by my lawyers, in confidence, and that those doctors to be supplied with my full medical notes in advance of their visit.

This is the least you can do to uphold the minimum of your oath to "do no harm."

Yours sincerely,

The Detainees on Hunger Strike at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base

(Signed by detainee)

Reprinted from the Guardian Online website

The Rule of Law

One of the things we are told by the great and the good who deign to rein over us is that western society stands as a beacon of hope and democracy in an uncertain and hostile world. Obama talks of the ‘City on the Hill’ and the BlairCameron melange talk about defending our values of ‘freedom and justice.’ All very good - but what does it mean in practice?

In short the inspirational words are worth less than a bucket of cold spit.

Judge them by what they do - not what they say.

Obama: Guantanamo. Came into his Presidency vowing to close it down. 5 years later it is still there. Well over two-thirds of the inmates turned out to be innocents caught up by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Bounty hunters claimed their filthy loot and swanned off. The prisoners have been incarcerated without charge or trial for all these years. Tortured - yes BBC, waterboarding is torture - rendered far away from families and transparency, the inmates have begun a determined effort to kill themselves by hunger striking. Shame on you Obama. Shame on the U S of A too. And shame on our western media for having amnesia about the place.

Blameron: Camp Bastion. Not wishing to be behind our ‘special relationship’ buddies it turns out we too are running a watered-down version of Guantanamo in Afghanistan. Frightened squaddies and gung-ho Hoorays have been seizing folk they consider to be insurgents and locking them away in Camp Bastion. It was admitted by the egregious Hammond yesterday that between 80 and 90 have been locked up - some for as as long as 18 months - without charge and without trial. The limit is supposed to be 4 days.

The Daily Hate weighed in on behalf of the government and the daft this morning, having a go at Civil Liberties lawyers for exposing what is going on (and en route - having a pop at the BBC for airing the matter on ‘Today.’ ). Would the cretins responsible for the article still feel the same way if the journalists arrested for phone hacking and bribing public officials had been treated the same as the Afghans? Arrested and locked away incommunicado for weeks going into months then years? All without being charged or put on trial? No access to legal representation? How would Rebekkah, Andy and their chums have coped? At least they know that they will get their chance in court to defend themselves.

Ah! But that wouldn’t happen because we have such things as Habeus Corpus, civil liberties and the rule of law - the very things we deny our captives.......

Taking the piss

The news emerged tonight that Dave Hartnett, the oh so compliant boss of the revenue, who worked on all these sweetheart deals with corporate giants, has tonight got himself a job with one of said giants, Deloites. Fancy that.

Last weeks announcement that Amazon paid just £2.4 million in tax on a profit of over £4bn in the UK was bad enough ----but there was a further twist. Amazon received £2.5 million in grants from the taxpayer to help them locate a new warehouse in Scotland. Fancy that.

Yesterday the media gave even more airtime to Messrs Howard and Reid in their campaign to invade our privacy in the spurious hope it will improve our ‘national security.’ These men are corporate whores who represent security companies yet this was not made clear by the media. If they were engaged in local council business they would have to declare an interest and withdraw from the discussion. But as they are ex-MPs in the Lords they don’t. Fancy that.

Just like the 206 Lords and MPs who are on the payroll of various private medicine companies, yet who were still allowed to vote on the various sections of the Bill to privatise the NHS. Fancy that. 

Lessons from Woolwich

What have we learned since the events of last week?

• Media coverage helped terrorists: jihadists and other extremists around the world will have noticed the reaction and the ensuing backlash with great interest.

          Lesson learned: make your crime as brutal as possible and take plenty of pictures.

• Ignore the siren songs of former cabinet ministers. Dr John Reid and Michael Howard have both been on the airwaves demanding that the communications bill aka ‘snoopers charter’) be revived. Not one presenter/interviewer made the point that both of these eminent upstanding chaps actually work for security companies. Reid is paid by that shining beacon of excellence G4S, and Howard is paid by something called ‘Diligence Europe’ - an organisation described on wikipedia as ‘a private intelligence and risk assessment company founded by former CIA and MI5 members.’

• Keep a sense of proportion: a small letter in the Independent contained this nugget: “Last month, 75-year-old Mohammed Saleem Chaudhry was fatally stabbed returning from prayer, in what police believed was a racist attack. Theresa May did not recall Cobra, BBC News24 did not fill hours of air time asking local people if they felt safe (from whites). Newspapers did not print letters telling the ‘white‘ community to get its house in order.” Dr Gavin Lewis from Manchester. 

         Was it necessary for Cameron to abandon his European trip? Or Miliband? Or to recall   

         Parliament? 

• The most effective way to defy terrorists is to continue working and living calmly and peacefully. 

• While thousands of column inches have been devoted to the incident, other grave matters go largely unreported and unmentioned. For instance a small item in the Independent reported that members of the Met Police in North London seized the possessions of people sleeping rough in Redbridge. This included sleeping bags and food donated by concerned locals. The police confirmed that this was to ‘reduce the negative impact of rough sleepers.’ 

 A society under stress needs clear values and principles from its leaders. The despicable policies of our political elite to divide and rule is making the situation worse and increasing hatred.

Here we go again

A brutal murder in Woolwich and out come the slippery security slimeballs riding the outrage wave. Listen hard and you can hear the sound of security companies’ execs rubbing their hands in glee. More business, more fertile ground to develop even more business including eavesdropping on all internet accounts and very few in the media saying ‘whoa!’ 

Boris ‘Gonad the Barbarian’ Johnson declared there was no link between the attack ‘and British Foreign policy.’ Really? The ‘war on terror,’ Iraq, Afghanistan and drones slaughtering innocent men, women and children have nothing whatsoever to do with this crime? His penis may be potent - his brain isn’t. 

The media frenzy, full of speculation and reference to ‘Whitehall sources’ nudge nudge, say no more....Lots of opinions referring to ‘in the name of Islam.’ 

Nowhere amidst all this churnalism was there any mention of what we have been doing to make people hate us and our military so much. The botched Afghanistan campaign followed on from the ongoing carnage unleashed in Iraq. Military personnel are being withdrawn and replaced by drones. In one attack alone 75 innocent people were killed. Where was the media outrage then? Poor unfortunates in foreign lands do not count. Nowhere do you read or hear in our media about ‘in the name of Christianity’ or ‘in the name of Imperialism.’ Instead they talk of ‘in the name of freedom.’ Orwell would understand.

Cameron comes back early from Europe and promises all those responsible will be brought to justice. Will this be the same justice that is being denied to so many in this country by the reduction in legal aid? Having made statements on camera these two men will not be easy to defend. They will get a trial. Unlike all those killed in surgical strikes which turned out to be more wrong place wrong time. No 'innocent until proven guilty' rule for them.

Not forgetting those currently on hunger strike in Guantanamo.

Guantanamo.

Rendition.

Drone missile attacks.

Israel/Palestine.

Iraq.

Afghanistan.

Wikileaks revelations -

Lies and cover up.

Moral high ground. What moral high ground? 

Lies, damned lies and George Osborne

HSBC

Anytime you hear Osborne pontificating about closing in on tax evasion, bear in mind that he is talking complete bullshit. As Private Eye pointed out in a couple of small pieces in their recent edition, it is what he does – not what he says – that matters.

‘“The message is simple. If you evade tax, we’re coming after you.” So thundered George Osborne last week as HM Revenue and Customs confirmed it was examining a wealth of leaked tax data. 

The data demonstrated ‘the use of companies and trusts in a number of territories around the world including Singapore, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands and the Cook Islands.’ So how do tax dodgers come to use BVI companies and the like to shield assets? By employing the services of British banks like HSBC is one way. 

The Eye has repeatedly pointed out HSBC’s involvement in tax evasion services and three months ago told how a tax dodging HSBC client was sent to London where a special unit in HSBC’s private banking arm set up BVI companies for him to hide his money in Swiss HSBC accounts (Eyes 1333 and 1334). On the back of these services HSBC Private Bank Ltd’s chairman reported that ‘excellent teamwork with HSBC’s retail banking operation in the UK, Asia, the UAE and the Americas led to a significant increase in  client referrals from these locations.’ And who was the proud chairman presiding over blatantly criminal tax evasion? Step forward the Reverend Lord (Stephen) Green, now trade minister in David Cameron’s government and unlikely to find Osborne “coming after” him.’

             –––––––––––––– ---- ––––––––––––––––––

ActionAid Survey

“Under Green HSBC also ran a huge network of its own offshore subsidiaries, a survey from charity ActionAid this weekend showing it to have 496 such companies. As readers of Eye 1336 will recall, it had set aside £3bn for an HMRC inquiry into its offshore avoidance but settled the dispute last year for no more than £200m. 

Among the other big tax haven users identified was Tesco, whose Ireland-Luxembourg-Hungary-Switzerland scheme, centred on a company called Cheshunt Overseas LLP and exposed by the Eye in 2008, is still very much alive and kicking according to recently filed accounts.

More importantly, such arrangements have been enshrined in statute by George Osborne and will only ever now be taxed at between 0 and 5%. His response to ActionAid’s survey at last weekend’s G7 was that it is ‘incredibly important that companies....pay the tax that is due’ but he failed to add that, through offshore tax breaks, he is slashing the tax due from Britain’s biggest multinationals.” (my emphasis)