Goes the sound of the shit hitting the fan.
House Committee Authorizes Subpoenas for White House Officials
By Paul Kiel – March 21, 2007, 10:59 AMJust reported on CNN. More soon.
Update: The subpoenas are for testimony from Karl Rove, his deputy Scott Jennings, former White House counsel Harriet Miers, deputy White House counsel William Kelley, and Alberto Gonzales’ chief of staff Kyle Sampson. They also seek more documents from the White House.
Via Ellis Sharp comes former ambassador Craig Murray’s report that the Commissioner of the Metropolitian Police, Ian Blair, has been having dinner with Lord Levy.
I’m sure as sure can be that Mr Ian Blair (no relation) is an absolute model of personal and professional probity, just like the PM and his cabinet. Oh yes.
Murray:
[…]
Meanwhile, I am stunned that last week Sir Ian Blair, head of the Metropolitan police, shared the top table at a Jewish community dinner with Lord Levy. Blair is the head of the police force that has arrested Levy, removed his passport and, from the actions of Lord Goldsmith this week in seeking to suppress information that may be used at the trial, is likely to charge him shortly with an imprisonable offence.
It cannot possibly be right for the head of the Metropolitan Police to be hobnobbing socially with a prominent alleged criminal. And this is the ultra-sensitive Ian Blair, whose concern for social form is so acute that he demanded an offical report when a female Muslim police officer refused to shake hands with him. The report presumably explained that many Muslim females do not shake hands with men.
Ian Blair and Levy are of course both close members of the Prime Minister’s social and political circle. It is by no means the first time that they have dined together. In July 2005 the two of them ran up a £140 ($270) bill at a London restaurant, which Sir Ian Blair charged to the taxpayer. There was no investigation into Levy at the time, but his being dead sleazy was hardly a secret.
Ian Blair’s explanation of that charge to the taxpayer was that Levy was a representative of the Jewish community. Now, there are many eminent and worthwhile people in London to whom that description applies, but I don’t think that Levy holds any community posts. He is no more a representative of the Jewish community than I am of the Scottish community. Besides, how many one to one £140 meals has Ian Blair had with a representative of the Muslim community? Or the Irish, Iranian, Kurdish, Turkish, Polish, Palestinian or Greek communities? Other than ultra-rich New Labour supporters who happen to have that background?
So Ian Blair and Levy have form. In current circumstances it was a gross error of judgement for Ian Blair to sit at a top table with Lord Levy. Levy should have realised that himself and made his excuses, but nobody could mistake Lord Levy for a gentleman. Therefore Blair should have made an excuse and left. As it is, some of the smell has rubbed off. Ian Blair should resign.
Why would someone with such a sterling repuation, Britain’s most senior policeman, be hobnobbing socially with one of the chief suspects in a criminal investigation of government corruption by his own police force? Enquiring minds would like to know.
Lord Levy has been rounding up as many prominent Jewish people as possible, even his own rabbi, to bombard the media with accusations that any criticisms of his behaviour are unjustified and indeed antisemitic.
Anti-Semitism?
In an interview with Channel 4 television Tuesday, his rabbi, Yitzchack Schochet, was asked whether Levy, a high-profile member of London’s Jewish community, was facing anti-Semitic treatment.
“I know that the Jewish community is becoming increasingly more sensitive that there’s the one Jew seemingly being hung out to dry here,” he said.
I don’t doubt that No.10 is trying to stitch him up for the crime, but Levy’s hardly some political innocent led astray.
Bollocks. The man’s a crook and he’d be a crook if he were anabaptist.
As for Ian Blair – resign? he should be sacked and publicly cashiered, then banged up in one of his own stinking cells.
…seems to be what certain MP’s are alleging about the leaking of the secret email that led to the cash for honours injunction this past weekend:
Downing St blamed for cash for honours leak
David Hencke and Vikram Dodd
Monday March 5, 2007
The GuardianThe MP who triggered the cash for peerages criminal inquiry last night accused Downing Street of leaking vital evidence in the case to the media.
The allegation by Angus MacNeil followed a frenzied weekend of speculation after the BBC was banned by a judge from reporting a leaked email between Downing Street aides about the scandal..
Angus Macneil is the public spirited SNP MP for Na h-Eileanan an Iar who with Plaid Cymru MPs made the orginal complaint to the police.
[…]
All news organisations are covered by the gag, but cannot learn terms of what they can and cannot report because the judge who granted the injunction insisted on its terms being secret between the BBC, Scotland Yard, and the attorney general. A spokesman for Lord Goldsmith said the injunction was gained to stop a broadcast which police feared could impede their inquiries, and added: “The terms of the injunction are confidential.”
Yesterday the News of the World quoted the Crown Prosecution Service as saying: “We believe the leaks are coming from government sources, who are trying to disrupt the inquiry.”
[,,,]
One of the things that non UKian-politics-wonks may not quite have got their heads around is the dual role of the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith– politically appointed, but able to exercise legal powers over prosecutions even where they affect his political patrons and despite the obvious conflict of interest that causes. The current AG, Lord Goldsmith, refused to recuse himself from acting in in regard to his fellow cabinet members despite his being a member of the government himself. You can see why people are a bit angry, including the LIb Dems (though they weren’t that bothered before) who’re now attempting to co-opt SNP and Plaid Cymru’s initiative:
Liberal Democrats are drawing up plans to force the Attorney General to undergo US-style confirmation hearings and make the post subject to parliamentary approval to reduce any perceived conflict of interest.
Ed Davey, chief of staff to the Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell, said he supported the injunction after the police warned the story could impede their inquiry. But he said the case highlighted long-standing claims that the Attorney General’s position as a senior cabinet minister could conflictwith his role as the Government’s senior law officer. He said he was “damned if he does, and damned if he doesn’t”.
Well, that’s one way of putting it. Personally I think that Goldsmith is so hopelessly compromised he must resign. Just call me a cock-eyed optimist.
But he won’t go and certainly not on a point of actual principle. Goldsmith is Blair’s last real ace-in-the-hole as the CPS gets closer, he won’t give him up in a hurry.
Blair is planning to stay until at least June 16th, if reports of his diary engagements are any guide, and he’s still going to need a pet AG – Labour doesn’t have any money left to fight with so the lawyer in ultimate charge of the prosecution in his pocket is a handy thing to have.
With a moral coward like Goldsmith, he’s got exactly what he needs.
For all the pious hooha that’s been spouted this past few weeks by the likes of that permatanned fraud Peter Hain and the risible John Prescott about the sanctity of William Wilberforce and the Abolition Movement they somehow failed to mention, as lenin points out, that quietly, New Labour has been repealing employment legislation thus allowing the effective reinstitution of slavery – not in some far-off, easily hidden colony this time, but on its own soil.
Slavery in the UK. posted by lenin
It seems Tom DeLay was not the only one to learn from the perfect petri dish of pure capitalism. New Labour is to abolish laws that provide the most basic protection for migrant workers. Workers who receive visas to enter domestic service are “legally entitled to leave their employer if they are abused or exploited and to receive basic protection – including the minimum wage – under UK employment law.” Now, if they are abused or mistreated by an employer, either they must suck it up or flee back to their country of origin. Even Barbara Roche, the former Home Office minister who used to put on a hideous freak show by appearing at the docks and interrogating lorry-drivers about any human cargo they might inadvertently be carrying, is alarmed: “These new proposals are a very retrograde step. Workers who suffer abuse from employers will feel absolutely alone. I can’t believe a Labour government which has taken such a firm stance against trafficking will want this to happen.” Oh, you’d be surprised, Barbara.
This comes as a recent report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found an enormous amount of slavery operating in the UK. There are said to be 10,000 gangmasters operating in the UK, who supply labour that operates under the threat of extreme physical violence to various sectors of British capital. These include everything from domestic service, where the new laws will apply, to agriculture, manufacturing, restaurant workers, food processors, care work, hotels and so on. Among these are tens of thousands of sex slaves, who include thousands of children – and not all of those children come from overseas. If you try to protest about your treatment, you “may be beaten, abused, raped, deported or even killed.”
Those of us on the anticapitalist left have long been derided as out-there hysterics when we’ve warned that the increased slavery and exploitation so apparent elsewhere is spreading to the developed world and that this is the natural outcome of the neoliberal economic polices that Blair and Brown have been pursuing.
Blindly tribal Labour supporters who still harbour the hope that Gordon Brown’s ascendance to the premiership would herald some sort of shift towards humanity and away from rapaciousness, when Brown himself willingly enables that rapaciousness is out of their tiny mind,
Just look at the money the party has just taken from private equity groups – largely unaccountable conglomerations of private money which buy take private and proceed to asset-strip other companies, They’re run by fund managers, unlike publicly regulated corporations they have no shareholders and they have little social accountability compared to public companies. Plus the Gordon Brown gives them a tax break!
Anyone who’s still with Labour despite everything, and that includes a number of people I was once was close to and thought highly of, deserves to go down with the rest of them.
Did you ever think, staunch union actvist and Labour loyalist, when you were sitting under that tree at Tolpuddle with the union banner at your feet and a cold drink in your hand, that your party would one day be the party of slavery?.
Well now it is and it’s all down to you and your blind loyalty to party over principle. Fuck you, you little Eichmanns.
The BBC’s reporting that recently-admitted adulterer and Blair-appointed Attorney General Lord Goldsmith has slapped a hastily-appiled-for injunctionon the BBC that prohibits it from reporting a significant development in the Cash for Honours investigation. The BBC website is reported to have earlier illustrated its report with a photo of Ruth Turner, that’s since been taken down, and Guido and the other Tory blogs are all atwitter.
Aside from the sheer conflict of interest displayed by the government’s senior law officer intervening to directly protect his political patrons from exposure it’s just plain dumb – there’s no doubt that the story’ll be out all over the world by morning.
My money’s on Ruth Turner when Education Secretary having emailed something very indiscreet to Lord Levy and to Tony Blair. Either that or Blair himself has been arrested under caution; but at this point we don’t actually know.
C’mon Beeb, cry havoc and let slip the story to the foreign press or blogs! Has none of you any post-Hutton balls?
New Labour must be feeling it though: Ruth Turner Kelly was openly jeered on Radio 4 this evening when she suggested on Any Questions that everyone respects Tony Blair, while Ken Loach replied, to tumultuous applause, that Blair and all his government should be tried at Den Haag for war crimes.
Then there’s this ultimate humiliation:
Tony Blair’s Old Band Record Anti-War Song
Published Thursday, 1st March, 2007
Ugly Rumours – that’s the band Tony Blair once belonged to – have now reformed and have their sights on the charts with an anti-war song directed straight at the Prime Minister.
The original members have come together (complete with a Tony Blair lookalike it seems) to record a cover version of the Edwin Starr song, War (What Is It Good For?). The band have also started a new website which explains their decision to release the track.
Anyone wanting to show their support can buy the track for just £1.50 by texting the word PEACE1 to 78789 or by this online link. All profits raised are going to support the work the Stop The War Coalition do.
According to their site, Ugly Rumours only need 5000 sales to break into the charts.
I think the country is trying to tell them something.
This has got to be the end this time.
Hasn’t it?
UPDATE: Bleh, shouldn’t post on the fly late at night – have corrected the more sloppy errors.
Latest from early morning news is that Goldsmith has put out a statement saying that he sought the injunction in the public interest at the behest of the Metropolitan police.
Whatever.
The effect is the same, a closed circle deciding that we ordinary mugs are not fit to know what criminality is happening at the upper reaches of the gpvernment we pay for. “They’re all just covering up for each other” – that’s the message the electorate will take from this latest Goldsmith manoeuvre, not prosecutorial fairhandedness. At this point even otherwise perfectly legally valid considerations of whether news reports might wreck a pending prosecution or skew any subsequent hearing seem rather irrelevant to us voters as the tide rises around Blair and his sofa government’s necks. We know he and they’re corrupt, we want them gone and we just wish the media would just do their bloody job and defy the injunction.
DOUBLE UPDATE: The BBC have banned the Ugly Rumours single. Way to go, beeb.