Antony Loewenstein

An eminently reasonable call. This should be extended to the influence and power of all corporate media interests. How are benefits achieved? Who is meeting whom? When and how? A real democracy doesn’t allow one family to own so many media titles:

The leader of Australia’s Green party has called on the government to investigate Rupert Murdoch’s extensive media holdings in Australia.

Party leader Bob Brown, a senator, urged the inquiry following fresh revelations in the UK over the News of the World phone-hacking scandal.

The Murdoch-owned paper is accused of hacking into the phones of crime victims, celebrities and politicians.

Mr Brown said the potential for similar activity in Australia should be probed.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard relies on the Greens to keep her minority Labor government in power.

Speaking in the Senate on Thursday, Bob Brown called on Communications Minister Stephen Conroy ”to investigate the direct or indirect ramifications to Australia of the criminal matters affecting the United Kingdom operations of News International”.

News International runs Mr Murdoch’s UK newspapers, including the News of the World, The Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times.

On Thursday, News International shut down the News of the World following a spate of fresh revelations.

Speaking later to Reuters news agency, Mr Brown said: “We have the most Murdoch media ownership of any country in the world with eight of the 12 metropolitan dailies owned by the Murdoch empire.

“I think that it’s just prudent to take a raincheck at this stage, because the events unfolding in London are so serious, and it would be irresponsible for us not to look at the potential for similar operations to have occurred in Australia,” he said.

As Rupert Murdoch’s empire faces unprecedented pressure in Britain over phone-hacking, criminality, ethical breaches and romancing of the political and media elites, it’s time to assess how one man and one family has amassed so much power in countless Western democracies. It should be challenged.

Here’s my interview on Al Jazeera English yesterday:

Australian academic Nick Dyrenfurth clearly has much time on his hands, writing essay after essay defending the glories of Israel but essentially ignoring the reasons so many people are increasingly against a state that willingly discriminates against Arabs based on race. He’s s a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Discipline of Work and Organisational Studies at Sydney University, clearly an area with vast understanding of what colonisation means for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

In yet another piece yesterday, he attacks the notion of anybody challenging Israeli politics:

Whilst I support Israel’s continuing existence I do not subscribe to key Zionist principles, namely that Jewish life in Israel is inherently superior to that of the Diaspora, and nor as a non-religious Jewish-identifying agnostic do I base that support upon religious grounds. Crucially I also reject the Zionist proposition that Jews inevitably cannot live amongst non-Jews. These are complex distinctions, much like the Palestinian/Israel conflict itself, which do not conform to a binary Zionist/Anti-Zionist worldview propounded by the likes of Brull, his anarchist idol Noam Chomsky and blogger-journalist Antony Loewenstein.

Once again, Dyrenfurth has the opportunity to get past name-calling and actually acknowledge what Israel is doing in Palestine but he refuses, either out of ignorance or dishonesty. It’s far easier simply damning Chomsky and me. Does he have any idea what Israel does to Palestinians under occupation? Does he care? And what is he doing to address these points, if helping Israel survive is a priority in his life?

Fellow Jewish dissident Michael Brull demolishes Dyrenfurth in a far more comprehensive way.

Handy reminder from the New York Times on the kind of political and media culture that exists in Britain (and Australia, too) that allows a war mongering media mogul to exercise so much power:

When David Cameron became prime minister in May 2010, one of his first visitors at 10 Downing Street — within 24 hours, and entering by a back door, according to accounts in British newspapers — was Rupert Murdoch.

Fourteen months later, with Mr. Murdoch’s media empire in Britain reeling, Mr. Cameron may feel that his close relationship with Mr. Murdoch, which included a range of social contacts with members of the Murdoch family and the tycoon’s senior executives, has been a costly overreach.

Those concerns were intensified by the arrest on Friday of Andy Coulson, the former editor of The News of the World and, until he resigned in January this year, Mr. Cameron’s media chief at Downing Street.

…

For now, though, Mr. Murdoch and the executives of News International, the Murdoch subsidiary that controls his newspaper and television holdings in Britain, may be less concerned about the impact that the scandal may have on their political influence than on the more immediate legal challenges they face.

The company’s decision to close The News of the World will not end the scrutiny of the newspaper’s practices by the police, courts and Parliament and by a public panel of inquiry that Mr. Cameron has promised to appoint. Together, these investigations seem likely to make for an inquisition that could run for years, causing further erosion in the credibility of the Murdoch brand and costing News International millions of dollars in potential legal settlements.

…

But for all the questions about how Mr. Cameron will weather the scandal, Mr. Murdoch has been much the larger target. Simon Hoggart, a columnist for The Guardian, described the relief among British politicians at seeing the Murdoch empire brought low.

For years, members of Parliament “have been terrified of the Murdoch press — terrified they might lose support, terrified, in some cases, that their private lives might be exposed,” he wrote. “But that has gone. News International has crossed a line and M.P.’s feel, like political prisoners after a tyrant has been condemned to death by a people’s tribunal, that they are at last free.”

The New Statesman says it well:

Finally, our leaders are outraged. The claim that the mobile phone of the murdered teenager Milly Dowler was hacked by the News of the World has been described as “truly dreadful” (David Cameron), “totally shocking” (Ed Miliband) and “grotesque” (Nick Clegg). Could this be the moment that Britain’s spineless politicians begin to break free from the pernicious grip of the Murdoch media empire?

In recent years, there has been no more sickening – and, I should add, undemocratic – spectacle in British public life than that of elected politicians kneeling before the throne of King Rupert. Paying homage in person to the billionaire boss of News Corporation became almost a rite of passage for new party leaders. Tony Blair, famously, flew out to address News Corp’s annual conference on an island off Australia in 1995. “We were thrilled when Tony was invited to be the keynote speaker,” writes Blair’s ex-chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, in his memoir.

The day after his speech in front of the media mogul, an editorial in the Murdoch-owned Sun declared: “Mr Blair has vision, he has purpose and he speaks our language on morality and family life.” By 1997, the Sun – which had heaped such abuse and ridicule on the former Labour leader Neil Kinnock – had officially come out for Blair and, in the wake of his landslide election victory, the new prime minister thanked the Sun for its “magnificent support” that “really did make the difference”.

But it didn’t. “I think the Sun came out for us because they knew we were going to win,” says Blair’s former communications chief, Alastair Campbell, now. In a study for the Centre for Research into Elections and Social Trends in 1999, Professor John Curtice of the University of Strathclyde concluded that it “was not the Sun wot won it in 1997″, adding: “[T]he pattern of vote switching during the campaign amongst readers of the Sun or any other ex-Tory newspaper proved to be much like that of those who did not read a newspaper at all.”

Yet Blair – and, lest we forget, Gordon Brown – continued to hug Murdoch close. “He seemed like the 24th member of the cabinet,” the former Downing Street spin doctor Lance Price has observed. On issues like crime, immigration and Europe, “his voice was rarely heard . . . but his presence was always felt”. Little has changed under Cameron. He appointed Andy Coulson as his director of communications in July 2007 – just six months after the latter had resigned as News of the World editor over the original phone-hacking scandal.

The Tory leader then made his own pilgrimage to the see the Sun King in August 2008, joining Murdoch on his yacht off the coast of Greece. It is said that he removed the liberal Dominic Grieve as shadow home secretary in 2009, on the insistence of News International’s chief executive – and close personal friend – Rebekah Brooks, who is now under pressure to quit over her alleged role in the hacking affair. The Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, waved through proposals to allow Murdoch to buy all of BSkyB – in the midst of the hacking row.

It couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch:

More here, here and here.

As Western countries increasingly outsource many aspects of life to unaccountable corporations desperate to make money from misery, resistance is both necessary and moral. Bravo Amnesty UK:

The UK Government must conduct a complete and radical overhaul of the current system of enforced removals from the UK, according to a new briefing and campaign launched today (7 July) by Amnesty International UK.

Private security companies, contracted by the UK Government, have reportedly used dangerous and improper control and restraint techniques. In the 2010 case of Jimmy Mubenga at least, these appear to have resulted in someone’s death. One such technique was nick-named by contractors “Carpet Karaoke”, as it involved forcing an individual’s face down towards the carpet with such force that they were only able to scream inarticulately ‘like a bad karaoke singer’. It involves the seated detainee being handcuffed, with a tight seatbelt through the cuffs and their head pushed down between their legs. There is a serious risk of death by positional asphyxia when this technique is used.

Other cases featured in the Amnesty briefing include a Moroccan national who claims his arm was broken when he was restrained by his arms and legs and was dropped down the stairs of the airplane; and a refused asylum seeker from the Democratic Republic of Congo, who said he struggled to breathe and feared he was going to die when security staff put a knee on his chest and sat on him, after he resisted his removal at Heathrow.

Sources with direct working experience of enforced removals have told Amnesty about serious failings in the training of private contractors conducting forced removals. Staff are trained in control and restraint techniques that are unsuitable for use on aircraft; there is no mandatory training in the safe use of handcuffs and restraints; and there is no watertight system in place to ensure that those accredited to conduct removals have received the required level of training. The reportedly widespread use of sub-contractors to fill staff shortages also raises further serious concerns about training and accountability.

British journalist Clare Sambrook on just another day in Britain:

“You’re a big boy now so I have to search you,” said the immigration officer to the five-year-old, donning latex gloves and patting him down at a Heathrow Airport detention facility run by outsourcing giant G4S.

The child had been booked into Terminal 4’s “short term holding facility” as a “visitor” which meant that his detention would have gone unrecorded but for a surprise visit by two of Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Prisons on 3rd March this year.

The boy, an EU national, had been returning home to Britain with his father, a non-EU national, after a family visit to the father’s country of origin. The Inspectors noted that the child was detained “without the necessary authority”.

Their “Report on an unannounced inspection of the short-term holding facility at Heathrow Airport Terminal 4”, published today [8], found that in three months to February 2011 the lock-up had held 78 children, including eight unaccompanied minors. Their average stay was 9.9 hours, twelve children were held for more than 18 hours — the longest detention being 23.9 hours. Not all staff were CRB checked.

This, more than a year after the Coalition Government pledged to end the detention of children for immigration purposes, and six months after deputy prime minister Nick Clegg claimed it had been accomplished [9]. 

The five-year-old subjected to the latex “rub-down search” then witnessed his father’s humiliation. The father’s phone was confiscated, but, say the Inspectors, he was not offered the free telephone call to which he was entitled. 

Instead of being taken to the family room, which had children’s toys, books and posters (but no natural light nor access to fresh air), the father and child were held in the adult room.