Novara Media posted a video tonight about GB News’ continuing problems. The channel has managed to annoy some of its audience for the departure of far-right host Mark Steyn. Steyn had been off-air for a little while due suffering two heart attacks. He has refused to come back because of the new contract the station sent him. This included the statement that if he returned, they’d have to keep a defibrillator on hand. This, however, is not a problem, as apparently the station is able to provide one. The problem is that they’ve been trying to shut him up about the subject of the evil Covid vaccine after Naomi Wolf, a noted Covid sceptic, turned up on the programme and made a few choice comments. But this isn’t all. Neil Oliver, one of the archaeologists from Coast, has managed to get them embroiled in a row about anti-Semitism.
Oliver gave a full, bug-eyed conspiracist rant on his programme, entitled ‘Silent Wars’, about how we were having our national sovereignty slowly taken away from us by THEM, who are intent on creating the One World State. Matthew Sweet, a campaigner against anti-Semitism, sent a tweet stating that this was a reference to a document, Secret Weapons for Silent Wars. This piece of literature is very much of the same type as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and similarly popular on the paranoid right-wing fringe. Complaints have been made to Ofcom, and Oliver’s rant was condemned by the all-party parliamentary group against anti-Semitism.
GB News is in trouble, but probably not to the extent that it’ll be taken off the air. However, their presenter Dalia Gebrial stated that the broadcaster wanted to be a British version of Fox News, but forgot that Fox is allowed to get away with its nonsense because America doesn’t have a broadcasting regulatory authority like Ofcom. She also made the point that the broadcaster was created by a couple of very rich men, and so it naturally shows their own irrational concerns and dangerous prejudices.
But, Novara concluded, just in case GB News is taken off the air, we can still look to Talk TV, owned by Murdoch, for quality right-wing journalism. For example, there’s Piers Morgan interviewing the older woman who allegedly took Prince Harry’s virginity. Actually, that at least may have some facts behind it, as opposed to anything Julia Hartley-Brewer has ever said about Brexit or people on benefits.
I have to say, I’d never heard of Secret Weapons for Silent Wars before, so that’s another conspiracist screed spreading hate. As for Oliver, it was evident that he was very right-wing – he gave a talk to the New Culture Forum, for example – but now he’s crossed into conspiracy theorist nuttiness. It’ll be interesting to see what happens about this. It’s just a pity that Talk TV isn’t having similar problems.
WatchMojo is a YouTube channel that specialises in lists of the most (insert adjective) of whatever subject they’re covering. This is usually popular culture, like films, TV programmes and comics. But in this video from their British offshoot they delve into the very murky world of British tabloid and red top newspapers to discuss the six worst of them. And so, imagine if you will, this run down of the very worst of British journalism accompanied by the old style Top of the Pops theme as that sadly missed programme went down the music charts.
Coming last at No. 6 is the Daily Star for its coverage of weird paranormal stories like black-eyed ghost children, their libelling of the Liverpool fans at the Hillsborough disaster and getting sued by the McCanns for its malign take on the disappearance of their daughter. They also blamed video games for Raoul Moat’s shooting spree, despite the entire lack of evidence showing that video games are responsible for real world violence, and for making up an interview with Duane ‘the Rock’ Johnson.
Coming in at no. 5, pop-pickers, is the Mirror, showing that it’s also left-wing papers that can have appalling low journalistic standards. This is there because of its owner, Robert Maxwell, raiding his employees’ pension funds, and Piers Morgan publishing fake photographs of alleged atrocities by British troops in Iraq. This part of the video shows some of the other headlines from the paper, such as its ‘Achtung! Surrender’ to the Germans at the 1996 World Cup as other illustrations of its lack of taste and anything resembling decent attitudes.
At No. 4 in this chart of journalistic infamy is the Daily Mail, as illustrated by its article ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts’ praising Mosley’s BUF and its owner, Lord Rothermere’s trip to Germany and praise of the Nazi regime. The video also states that it’s been suggested that the paper’s pro-appeasement stance convinced Hitler that Britain would not retaliate if he invaded Poland, thus causing World War II. More recently the paper has also been sued for libel or inaccurate reporting by celebs such as Melania Trump, Alan Sugar and Elton John. The video also shows some of its racist headlines opposing the decolonisation of mathematics and opposition to non-White immigration.
The Daily Express is at No. 3, again because of such low points as being sued by the McCanns, scaremongering stories about the world being wiped out by aliens or killer asteroids, and its weird fixation on conspiracy theories about Princess Diana and her death, often at the expense of more current and important stories. In 2010 its editor said that he was appalled by some of the stories it ran, and was going to reign in its islamophobia.
No. 2, the late, unlamented News of the Screws. This was always controversial, but lasted 150 years, even claiming at one time to be the world’s best newspaper. That was until it was brought down by the phone-tapping scandal, whose victims not only included celebrities, royalty like Princes William and Harry, but also murder victims and dead soldiers. It was forced to fold after all its advertisers deserted it.
But the top slot in this catalogue of filth and sleaze merchants is the Scum. This rag’s viciously low reporting has made it notorious around the world, but what foreign viewers may not know is that it’s particularly hated in Britain for its smearing of the Liverpool fans at Hillsborough, like its fellow tabloid the Depress. Instead of the Liverpool fans being responsible for the carnage, it was found that the police were responsible for the 96 deaths. This anti-Liverpool venom is the reason it’s still banned in the city, despite the paper having made some half-hearted apologies afterwards. It also claimed the Birmingham 6, a group of Irish men wrongly imprisoned for an IRA terrorist atrocity, were guilty. On top of this it was also sued for libel by Wayne Rooney. But what makes it especially hated is its staunch support of Margaret Thatcher, the infamous ‘Gotcha!’ headline for the sinking of the Belgrano during the Falklands War, and its claim that it was responsible for Thatcher’s electoral victories with its headline ‘It was the Scum Wot won it’.
Of course this list leaves out some other instances of tabloid wrongdoing. The Scum has had any number of complaints for racism upheld by the former Press Complaints Commission, including one in which it compared Arabs to pigs. Piers Morgan has also been involved in the phone hacking scandal, though it’s possible the video mentions this and I’ve just forgotten it did. And I’d say the worst British tabloid was the Sport in its various editions for its mixture of sleaze, stories about freaks and daft stories following the Weekly World News style of journalism, like its claim that there was a B52 bomber on the Moon. The Sport was set up by David ‘the Slug’ Sullivan, according to Private Eye, a pornographer with convictions for running girls. But the paper has a low circulation compared to the others here, and so is far less influential.
As for the Scum coming first as Britain’s worst tabloid, I agree entirely, although I doubt this is an accolade the Scum would want to boast about on its front page. But when it comes to malign, biased reporting and racism, it is indeed the Scum wot wins it.
Mike’s put up an excellent and disturbing article today, which shows very clearly where Boris Johnson’s priority’s really are. He’s planning to reverse the proposed reduction of Britain’s nuclear arsenal to 180 warheads and increase it instead to 260. As the peeps on Twitter have pointed out, this is a 45 per cent increase. It’s supposed to be in preparation for a possible terrorist attack using chemical or nuclear weapons by 2030. ‘Russ’, one of the critics of this insane proposal, has asked what Boris intends to do in the event of an attack like 9/11, when the terrorists came from four different countries. Would he launch those missiles at four different capitals? He states ‘Not a chance. Idiotic, dangerous, flashy bullshit.’
The question about 9/11 is a very good one. The vast majority of the plotters came from Saudi Arabia, and there is very, very strong evidence that responsibility for the attack goes all the way to the very top, to country’s present king or his head of intelligence. But George Dubya and Blair didn’t order reprisals against Saudi Arabia. Instead, we invaded Afghanistan. The country was indeed hosting Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, the organisation responsible for it. But I’ve also heard that the Afghans denied all knowledge of the plot and offered to surrender bin Laden to the Americans, but were ignored. The American military were planning the possibility of invading Afghanistan several years before in order to control a planned oil pipeline passing through it.
Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was also accused of complicity with 9/11, and Blair was scaremongering about Hussein having weapons of mass destruction that could be launched within three quarters of an hour. This was also a lie. The real reason for the invasion was, once again, oil. The American and Saudi oil companies wanted Iraq’s reserves and its oil industry, while American multinationals also wanted to get their grubby mitts on the country’s state industries. The actual cost to the Iraqi people has been horrendous. The country’s tariff barriers were lowered as part of a plan to create the low tax, free market state the Neo-Cons dreamed about, with a result that every nation dumped their excess goods there, undermining its domestic businesses. The result was soaring bankruptcy and unemployment. The country’s welfare state was destroyed, as was the ability of women to pursue a career in safety outside the home. The country was riven by sectarian violence, and the mercenaries used as part of the invasion force ran amok, running drugs and prostitution rings. They also shot ordinary Iraqis for sport. The Allied forces also used depleted uranium and other highly toxic materials in their armaments, with the result that the country also has a horrendously high rate of birth defects.
And now Boris wants more nukes. Does he intend to use them on further victims of western imperialism, countries deliberately and wrongfully blamed for terrorist attacks just to further western geopolitical and commercial goals? Mike also suggests that it seems to him that Boris is planning to start some kind of war with a country on or near the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and would like to set off a few nukes to show how tough he is.
This is all too possible. The American radical magazine, Counterpunch, published an article a few years ago arguing that the American military was set on a policy of ‘full spectrum dominance’. This meant that it was to remain the world’s only superpower with the ability to destroy or conquer any other country that could threaten it. And it looked very, very much that Hillary Clinton, who claimed to be terribly offended by the treatment of Meghan Markle, was preparing for a war with China. Lobster has also published a very detailed article arguing that, despite the rhetoric and posturing about the Chinese threatening western security interests in the South China Sea, the Chinese actually aren’t any danger at all. But they do threaten the global American commercial power both in practice and at an ideological level. The Americans believe in deregulation and free trade, while in China capitalism is regulated and state-directed. The global struggle between America and China is partly about which model of capitalism should be dominant.
And then there’s the issue of whether you could ever use a nuclear bomb in the event of a terrorist attack. From the 1970s to historic Good Friday peace agreement in the ’90s, Northern Ireland and Britain suffered terrorist violence and bombings. In Ulster this was by Irish Nationalist and Loyalist paramilitaries, while in Britain the bombings were carried out by the IRA. Following 9/11, one of the critics of the invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq asked whether Britain would have used the same tactics of mass bombing and air strikes on Northern Ireland in response to the IRA’s terrorism. Of course we wouldn’t, although we did send troops there to suppress it. There’s a real possibility that, thanks to Brexit, the Good Friday Agreement could break down and Ulster could once again fall into violence and bloodshed. Which also raises the spectre of further terrorist bombings in Britain. Would Boris nuke Derry or Belfast in response? I doubt it. At the same time, many of the Islamist terrorists responsible for atrocities in Britain seem to be homegrown, Muslim Brits who come from ordinary, peaceful families, but who have been radicalised by Islamist propaganda on the Net or from some firebrand preacher in a British mosque. Obviously, Boris isn’t going to use it in Britain itself.
There’s also the danger that if Boris every uses them against a foreign enemy, it’ll pitch the world into a nuclear war that will end very quickly with the destruction of the planet. I can remember the late, great Irish comedian Dave Allen commenting on this in one of his shows on the Beeb during Reagan and Thatcher’s New Cold War of the 1980s. ‘Do you know,’ he said in his tobacco and whisky cured voice, ‘that there are enough nuclear weapons to blow up the world three times. Three times! Once is enough for me!’ It was a profound relief for millions around the world when Reagan and Gorbachev signed their arms limitation agreement in Iceland. That, and the collapse of Communism, promised the beginning of a better world, where we wouldn’t have to fear nuclear annihilation. Well, it was until India and Pakistan looked set to nuke each other later in the ’90s.
But now those dreams of a better, more peaceful world are fading as Boris once again wishes to send us all back to the days of Thatcher and the Cold War. Thatcher was vehemently in favour of keeping Britain’s nuclear deterrent. So much so that she falsified the results of an experiment to estimate the results of a nuclear war on Britain. The experiment showed that it would end with the country’s major cities reduced to nuclear cinders. This was too much for the leaderene, who had the parameters of the projection altered to give the results she wanted. But this still would have resulted in millions dead, and so she had the parameters altered again to show that Britain would have survived with minimal damage. By which time the whole exercise had to be scrapped as it was completely unreliable.
Michael Foot, the leader of the Labour party at the time, favoured unilateral nuclear disarmament. He was right, but the Tories and their puppet press viciously attacked him as some kind of fool or traitor, who would give in to the evil Commies. The complaint of many Tories was that he would give our nuclear weapons away. Unlike Maggie, the bargain basement Boadicea, as I think Roy Hattersley once called her.
It looks very much like Boris is playing the same game. He’s wrecking the economy, destroying the health service and welfare state, but he’ll have the right-leaning part of the British public praising him for standing up to those evil foreigners and protecting the country with nukes.
And all the while he’s claiming that there’s no money to give the nurses and other hardworking, front-line professionals anything more than what is in reality a derisory cut in wages. Which is clearly a lie. But it does remind me of what Goering once said:
‘Guns will make us powerful. Butter will make us fat.’
He’s following the Nazis in deliberately starving people while splashing the cash on arms.
The big news this week has obviously been Harry and Meghan’s interview with Oprah Winfrey, and specifically Markle’s allegations of racism against unnamed royal advisors and flunkeys. Yesterday Piers Morgan got the heave-ho for very baldly stating his objections to Markle’s allegations. Standing outside his own not unimpressive residence yesterday, the former editor of the Mirror said that he didn’t believe a word Markle said, and that she had done enormous damage to the royal family, especially when Prince Philip was lying in hospital. Zelo Street has published a piece critiquing his remarks, and pointing out that Morgan’s claims to believe in and defend democracy and free speech are a bit rich, considering how he shouts down those he doesn’t agree with. He was also the editor of the Mirror when its journos and those of the Scum were hacking phones left, right and centre. Back in the 1990s he was also in the pages of Private Eye as it was under his editorship of the Mirror that the two hacks in the paper’s ‘City Slickers’ column committed the share ramping that got them arrested. The Eye presented very strong evidence that Piers ‘Boy’ Morgan was also involved, but somehow managed to escape arrest and prosecution. Morgan has fully reciprocated the magazine’s animus towards him. According to Ian Hislop, Morgan sent round a hack to talk to his parish priest, hoping that the good clergyman would betray a few confidences Hislop had made during Confession. In this instance, he was disappointed. Hislop’s like me, an Anglican. Individual confession is part of Roman Catholic belief and practice, not Church of England. And I don’t think the priest told Morgan’s boy or girl any secrets anyway.
Of course, the right-wing scumbag press have been engaged in a long campaign against Harry and Markle. They dislike her as an intrusive left-winger. Alex Belfield, the arch-Tory YouTuber and internet radio host, sneeringly refers to her as ‘Meghan Mallarky’. Not only does he hate her for being left-wing, feminist, anti-racist and ‘woke’, he also sees her as aggressively self-centre and manipulative. His short videos about the couple frequently included him urging Harry to dump her and return to the bosom of the royal family. Zelo Street has also pointed out that there is more than a touch of racism in the press’ antipathy to Markle. Part of their hatred was also due to the fact Markle wasn’t prepared to play their games. She wanted all media access and interviews to be on hers and Harry’s terms, not theirs. Snubbed with their power to make or break celebrities under attack, the press responded with hostile coverage of the royal couple.
But this time I do think Morgan is right. Markle’s allegations simply don’t ring true, and are likely to damage the royal family. Simon Webb, the author of the ‘History Debunked’ YouTube channel, put up a video the other day critiquing some of the remarks Hal and Megs made to Winfrey. Webb is, I think, a Telegraph-reading Tory. He’s also a very strong critic of some of the assertions and fake history put out by anti-racist activists and believes in the ‘Bell Curve’ nonsense about there also being differences in intelligence between the races. But he also seems not to be personally racist, and has put up several excellent videos tearing down the vile conspiracy theory about the Jews promoting mass immigration to destroy the White race. His arguments also seem to be based on real, historic fact.
His video critiquing the allegations Hal and Megs made begins with him commenting on Harry’s complaint that his father had cut him off financially. Webb thought this was peculiar, because by the time he was 20, he’d been supporting himself financially and independently of his family. He was somewhat out of touch with contemporary young people, but it seemed quite odd to him that a 36 year old man on the edge of middle age should complain about no longer being sent money by his father. It can also be added that Harry is immensely wealthy anyway, and so can well afford to look after himself and his wife in the style to which they have become accustomed.
He also wondered how true the allegations of racism could be, considering that Markle doesn’t look particularly Black to him. He observed that she looks more like the olive-skinned people of the Mediterranean. Which, I think, is a fair comment. I know people, who as far as I know are completely White, who go her colour or darker in the summer. Black anti-racists have complained for a long time about ‘colourism’. This is the form of racism in which lighter-skinned people of colour are given higher status, better opportunities and respect than their darker-skinned kindred. It’s another hangover from slavery and the caste system that it gave rise to. Darker skinned, ‘Black’ slaves were held to be more suitable for tough, physical work, while lighter skinned slaves were given less arduous duties commanding greater respect out of the sun. It seems to me that if colourism does exist, then Markle is probably a beneficiary of it, and not a victim of racism.
Then there is that comment by a courtier, speculating what colour the baby would be. It’s actually highly questionable whether this is actually racist. People usually speculate about the appearance of an expected child, and which one of the parents it will take after. Webb here recalls how one of his friends was a bi-racial young woman, who had an affair with a White guy, and became pregnant. Their Black friends freely speculated on whether the child would be White or Black. It seemed to Webb that the royal courtiers were being accused of racism simply for doing what people, including Blacks normally do, without any racist intent.
And the more I look back at Markle’s conduct over the past few years, the more it seems to me that, unfortunately, the scumbag right-wing press do have a point. I think she is manipulative, egocentric and self-promoting. And while I am no great fan of Morgan, I don’t think he should have been forced out of his position on GMB for his opinions on Markle. It very much looks like another piece of cancel culture, where individuals are being silenced for having controversial opinions. Mostly it’s been done against the left, but there have been instances where someone has been removed from YouTube for expressing a reasonable opinion someone has taken exception to as racist, sexist, transphobic, homophobic or whatever. I’m sure Zelo Street is right when they point out that Morgan is no real defender of free speech and democracy himself. But Morgan’s forced departure is itself an attack on someone’s right to express their reasonable opinion.
In this matter, it’s Morgan’s opponents who are undermining free speech. Just as the pair’s interview with Oprah threatens to further undermine the monarchy.
There was a very interesting piece by Cahal Milmo in yesterday’s edition of the I, for Saturday, 29th August 2020. The MoD has released a series of papers in response to a question in parliament, showing that the British armed forces are training those of 17 states guilty of human rights violations. The article, ‘Britain trains soldiers for repressive regimes’ runs
The British military has provided training to the armed forces of a succession of repressive regimes from Belarus to Bahrain, according to official records.
A list of countries receiving training from UK armed forces since 2018 includes 17 nations formally designated by the British government as “human rights priority countries”, where there is particular concern about repression or other abuses.
The training ranges from instruction on piloting state-of-the-art fast jets for allies such as Saudi Arabia to officer training for China.
In Belarus, where the authorities have this month been condemned for a brutal crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators and armed forces have been placed on a state of high alert, Britain provided an advanced command course for senior officers.
The training,k detailed in records released by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) following a parliamentary question, drew condemnation from campaigners who said it put Britain at risk of becoming “complicit” in gross breaches of human rights.
Andrew Smith, of Campaign Against Arms Trade, said: “Many of these armies have appalling human rights records and have been linked to brutal oppression as well as international aggression.
“By training and collaborating with despots, dictatorships and human rights abusers, the UK risks making itself complicit in the abuses that are being inflicted.” The group said it wanted to see an investigation into precisely which military forces the UK had given training to and whether they had been subsequently linked to repressive actions or other breaches of basic liberties.
However, the defence ministry insisted that all of its training abroad emphasised the observation of human rights protections.
A spokesman for the MoD said: “Every defence relationship is taken on a case-by-case basis. Any defence engagement is designed to educate where necessary on best practice and compliance with international humanitarian law.”
The figures suggest that more than half of the 30 countries on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s human rights priority list have received training assistance from British forces. They include Uzbekistan, Sir Lanka, Bahrain, Egypt and Pakistan.
I’m not surprised by any of this. We already sell armaments to vicious, repressive regimes like Saudi Arabia. Britain has also used private mercenary companies as a method of unofficially sending military assistance to repressive regimes, such as Keenie Meenie Services, (KMS), founded by retired Brigadier Mike Wingate Gray, a friend of Maggie Thatcher, and whose son Arthur is a mate of princes William and Harry. Among other nasty regimes, KMS has provided troops for Sri Lanka, the Nicaraguan Contras and the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, as well as Sultan Qaboos of Oman. On the other hand, they don’t seem to have provided any assistance to the Khmer Rouge during the 1980s. This was probably done by the SAS. See ‘Profiting from War’, John Newsinger’s review of Phil Miller’s Keenie Meenie: The British Mercenaries Who Got Away with War Crimes (London: Pluto Press 2020) in Lobster 79, Summer 2020 . See https://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/free/lobster79/lob79-keenie-meenie-review.pdf
I’ve no doubt that the training given by the official British armed forces does stress the observance of human rights. However, this still does not absolve us of training the troops of brutally oppressive regimes, which those providing the assistance must know will ignore anything they are taught about observing human rights.
The mercenaries, however, are rather different. They don’t just providing training, but have actually participated in atrocities. During the proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, the head of the CIA’s Afghan Task Force declared that Thatcher was to the right of Attila the Hun and remarked on the lack of any legal restraint on MI6. Miller’s book quotes him as saying that they had a willingness to do jobs he wouldn’t touch. This comes from a senior figure in the organisation that helped overthrow Salvador Allende in Chile and install the Fascist dictatorship of General Pinochet.
Britain has spent too long training and providing guns and troops to the world’s thugs and butchers. It’s long past time we stopped. But the last time anyone suggested we should have an ethical foreign policy was Robin Cook under Tony Blair. Which after the Iraq invasion sounds like a very sick joke.
One of the big news stories today is about Prince Harry being caught out in a prank call by two Russian hoaxers. They posed as teen climate campaigner Greta Thunberg and her father, and tricked him into making some impolitic comments. The one replayed in the ITV news piece about this story was of the prince saying to ‘Thunberg’ that he didn’t mind telling ‘you guys’, but that Donald Trump had blood on his hands through his refusal to sign the Paris accords on global warming. This was going to have terrible effects on the Pacific Island nations.
The hoax was reported by the Scum, and Zelo Street today has put up a piece wondering if Murdoch’s mighty organ didn’t pay the two jokers or put them up to the job. Because how else would they know that Harry and Meghan are living in luxury on Vancouver Island? That would make sense. The Murdoch press has plenty of previous with this. There’s the entire career of the fake sheikh Mahmood Mazher in the late, unlamented News of the Screws. Mazher, who really came from Birmingham, used to dress up as an Arab sheikh and then ingratiate himself with the good, the great, and the not-so-great, in order to trick them into doing or saying something improper. He tried it with a friend of the two princes and the young man’s girlfriend, whisking them off to Las Vegas. They were given a whirlwind tour of the sites, while Mazher in disguise kept asking them questions about the royal family, and particularly the Queen Mother. The couple didn’t have any opinion about them, and told Mazher that. They didn’t realise who he was at the time, and it was only when they were back in Blighty that they twigged it was him. Not that it did Mazher any good. When they checked with the Screws, they were told that he’d got nothing of any value out of them and the whole trip had wasted £7,000. Good. May all of these stunts by Murdoch’s lackeys be such colossal wastes of money.
This might have some bearing on how Trump views the British establishment or the royal family, but the prince is now a private citizen and can say what the devil he likes. And he is absolutely right about Trump and the Pacific Islanders. Trump doesn’t believe one bit in climate change and global warming, and is actively trying to block any state research and publication of findings showing that it exists. And it is a threat to the Pacific Island nations. One of them – I think it might have been Kiribati – is only a metre or so above sea level. They put on a demonstration a few years ago urging the world and the major powers to do more to tackle climate change, because rising sea levels mean that their homeland may soon be underwater. Harry obviously knows this, and I’m not surprised – his gran is the head of the Commonwealth, after all.
I got the impression that the Murdoch press and the rest of the Tory media hated Harry for marrying Meghan, a woman of colour, and taking over some of her progressive ideas, like feminism and Green politics. They’re probably congratulating themselves even now with having tricked him into disgracing himself.
But not in my book.
The prince was the victim of a disgraceful prank, which serves no good public purpose anyway.
And the prince is absolutely right about Trump, climate change and global warming.
And he’s shown that he takes very seriously both the climate crisis and the welfare of the peoples of the Commonwealth and the world who are affected.
Murdoch and his goons are a disgrace, but Harry and Meghan have outclassed them.
I hope they win their lawsuit against Murdoch and his goons, and that this incident only makes Harry and Meghan more popular, and Murdoch more despised.
Harry and Meghan and suing the Mail on Sunday for publishing a letter from Megan to her father. And today, that bastion on the British press – and as the late Terry Wogan used to say of the Beeb, ‘there are many basty ‘uns in there’ – the MoS set out its defence. It’s the old ‘public interest’ argument. They’re going to argue that Meghan and Harry don’t have the same right to privacy as the rest of us, because they’re private correspondence and activities are of interest to the public. Zelo Street has put up a piece demolishing it by showing how circular the argument is. The letter, and anything else the royal couple writes or does, is of interest to the public because the press tells them it is. Zelo Street states
‘What the MoS is setting out in its defence is that what it did is OK, because that is what the paper expects to be able to get away with. Hal and Meg should not expect to have any privacy because that would impact on the MoS’ business. Hence that paper and all the others kicking off like so many spoilt children at the prospect of the couple being out of reach very soon. How dare they stop the press scoring copy off of them?
In mounting this defence, then, the MoS has proved the Duchess’ point for her. But she and her family are not there merely to provide cheap copy. The press just doesn’t get it.’
The public interest argument does, however, also justify the publication of the private correspondent of the newspaper magnates, who make their bloated fortunes exploiting the private correspondence not just of Harry and Meghan, but of anyone else in the public eye. Murdoch, Geordie Grieg, the weirdo Barclay twins and the rest of the whole unsavoury crew play a powerful role in modern politics. They have intimate connections to the Tory government, and not only shape public opinion in its favour, they also arrogantly assume that they have a right to dictate the political direction not just of the government but also of the opposition. Former cabinet members have reported that Rupert Murdoch was always an invisible presence at the meetings of Blair’s government, and the former Labour Prime Minister worried how his policies would go down with the owner of the Scum and the Times. That’s why the Mail, the Times and the Scum have been running pieces telling the Labour party what it should do to become electable – unsurprisingly this the expulsion of the Corbynites and the return to Blairism – and viciously attacking left-wing candidates for the Labour leadership, like Rebecca Long-Bailey.
The press barons are unelected, massively powerful, and have what amounts to a monopoly on news in this country. Murdoch’s empire should have been broken up under the Monopolies and Mergers’ Commission years ago, but it wasn’t because he was a supporter of the Tories. They also have huge business interests, that also dictate the views their papers take on various stories. Way back in the 1980s, for example, Tiny Rowlands, the owner the Absurder, wouldn’t publish pieces critical of Zimbabwe because he had interests in a mining corporation working there. But these same press magnates are absolutely unaccountable. Yet they arrogantly assume they have the right to dictate governmental policy, while zealously keeping their own affairs private.
But if the Royals have no reasonable right to privacy, neither do Grieg, Murdoch et al. If they are shaping policy and public opinion, we should know their private business to judge for ourselves whether they are correct and acting in our interest. It’s only fair. And as they acted as the unofficial Tory propaganda office at the last election, it should all be accessible under the Freedom of Information Act.
I found another interesting snippet from Private Eye while I was looking through a pile of old copies last night, which adds a slightly different perspective Prince Harry’s decision to prosecute the press. Harry is rightly angered at the way his and other’s phones were hacked, and it appears that one of the other victims was his mother, Princess Diana. It looks like one of those bearing responsibility for that was Piers Morgan, who was editor of the Mirror and then News of the World when it happened.
I’m afraid I’ve misplaced the snippet, but if anyone’s really interested, I’ll try to find it again. But it was a report on a later sent to a complainant by IPSO about an article published in one of the newspapers. This claimed that a pair of ‘psychic twins’ had been contacted by the late Lady Di, who had given them warning from her to be given to Meghan Markle. If the Eye’s account is correct, it was deeply tasteless story. I’m not a sceptic regarding life after death and the possibility of the dead contacting the living, but this is right up there with some of the nonsense spread by mediums like the late Doris Stokes in her prime. And the various celebrity mediums, who’ve come out with messages from everybody from Henry VIII, Julius Caesar and Queen Victoria. It’s nonsense. The person, who complained to IPSO about it apparently objected to it because these claims were being reported as fact. IPSO stated that they decided that it had not. The article had included plenty of terms indicating neutrality towards the truth of the twins’ claim, like ‘perhaps’, and indicated that they were only reporting what they claimed through statements like ‘they said’. And so IPSO turned the complaint down.
The article didn’t say, who had complained to IPSO, carefully preserving their anonymity. And it could have been anyone. Princess Di may be over twenty years’ dead, but she still has her fans. Just as Meghan Markle and Harry also have their admirers amongst the general public, quite apart from their personal friends.
I was never a fan of Princess Diana. She did some good as Prince Charles’ consort, notably in her campaign against landmines. But she was also adept at manipulating the press, and her spat with Charles did diminish the general esteem of the monarchy, even if Charles was the adulterer. Nevertheless, she was killed with Dodi Fayed trying to escape the paparazzi press that followed and exploited her.
This story reminds me of comments Robbie Williams made a few years ago on a programme hosted by Jon Ronson on Radio 4. Ronson and Williams were going to a UFO and alien abductions convention in the US. When asked how he got interested in ufology, the 90s singing sensation replied that it was partly due to the rubbish he had suffered from the press about his mother. She was a medium, and so the papers had run endless stories about Williams, his mother and spooks until he was so sick and tired of it that he couldn’t read the papers. It was then that he started getting into UFOs, as something of a diversion. And on the subject of UFOs, Williams sounded remarkably sensible and grounded. When asked about some of the absurdities of the alien abduction phenomenon and Indigo Children – supposedly aliens incarnated as children to guide us here on Earth – he simply replied that he didn’t believe it or disbelieve it.
You can well understand why Williams would be upset with the press stories about himself and his mother. Just as it would be no mystery to anyone if Harry was upset about similar stories about his own mother and wife. Lady Di was certainly no angel, but she was hounded to her death by the papers. And the papers have been attacking Meghan Markle, with more than an undercurrent of racism beneath. How dare this American woman of colour marry a royal! And anyone would be annoyed at the press for hacking their and their family’s phones.
I therefore have every sympathy for Prince Harry’s decision, and wish him the very best in his suit against the press, particularly Rupert Murdoch and Piers Morgan. I’m sure that many Conservatives will too. I know one, who hated the Sun despite its right-wing bias, because it had taken every opportunity to exploit and run down the monarchy. It looks like now one of the royals is biting back.
Yesterday, the Groaniad reported that Nigel Farage had made some unpleasant, and quite possibly impolitic, comments about the royal family atthe Conservative Political Action Conference in Sydney. The Brexit party’s fuhrer spared the Queen his sneers, but went on to attack Prince Harry and Megan Markle for their ‘irrelevant’ social justice and environmental concerns, called the late Queen Mother a ‘slightly overweight gin drinker’. He then went on to say that he hoped the Queen would continue to live a long time to stop ‘Charlie boy’, as he called Prince Charles, becoming king, and that William would live forever to stop Harry ascending the throne. He also bewailed how Megan Markle changed Harry’s laddish behaviour. According to today’s I, page 9, the Fuhrage said
Terrifying! Here was Harry, here he was this young, brave, boisterous, all male, getting into trouble, turning up at stag parties inappropriately dressed, drinking too much and causing all kinds of mayhem. And now he’s met Megan Markle and it’s fallen off a cliff.
The I explained that when Fuhrage referred to him as being ‘inappropriately dressed’ at stag parties, he meant the time when Harry turned up at one dressed in Nazi uniform. According to the I, a spokesman for the man ‘Judge Dredd’ satirised as ‘Bilious Barrage’ claimed that the Groaniad had taken his comments out of context. But as Mike says in his article about this, it’s irrelevant whether Farage meant what he said or not. He was telling his right-wing audience what they wanted to hear: that he was their friend.
Now I’m aware that some of the readers of this blog may well be republicans, who believe that the monarchy is a vestige of feudal privilege and that we would be better off with a proper democratic constitution and an elected presidency. I’m also aware that what Farage said at the conference would be unremarkable if it came from a member of the public or a journalist. A few years ago, before his career imploded due to plagiarism, Johan Hari wrote a very long article in either the Independent or Guardian attacking the royal family. A tranche of government material had been declassified and released to the national archives. These revealed that ministers and senior civil servants had been worried about Prince Charles writing letters to newspapers and various official bodies trying to influence government policy. He was, for example, very keen to stop the closure of the grammar schools. The officials found his interference a headache because the monarchy is supposed to be above politics. They are definitely not supposed to try to influence government policy.
The Tory press, including and especially the Heil, despise Charles. I can remember the Rothermere’s mighty organ claiming that that the Tories were discussing ways to ensure that the Crown passed directly from the Queen to William, completely bypassing Charles. The reason they cited for this was that Charles was too close to Laurens van der Post, the author of Testament to the Bushmen. Under van der Post’s influence, the Heil claimed, the future heir to the throne had become too New Age in his spiritual beliefs. He had indicated that he wanted to be known as ‘Defender of Faith’ when he ascended the throne, an inclusive title to cover all religions, rather than ‘Defender of the Faith’, meaning exclusively Christianity. As he would be the head of the Church of England, this would create a constitutional crisis. I wonder if the real reason was that Charles appeared a bit too left-wing, especially in his concern for the unemployed. And Charles’ office also spoke out against the decision by John Major’s government to close down Britain’s mining industry.
Hari was also scathing about the Queen Mother. He claimed that she was certainly no democrat, complaining that it was ‘so unnatural’ when she was a young woman. Ministers were also upset at the government apparently having to spend £1 million a year keeping an office open for her so she could get the results at Ascot. Private Eye has also described her as ‘greedy’ and criticised Charles for hypocrisy over his views on architecture. Charles caused outrage a little while ago by describing modern buildings as ‘monstrous carbuncles’. But the Prince himself was also employing the same type of architects to design similar buildings. They also attacked him for the colossal overpricing of his organic honey.
Now we live in a democracy, where you are allowed to criticise the government and the monarchy. One where people do, often. But what makes Farage’s comments unwise is that they come from a ruthlessly ambitious politician. Attacks on the royal family are bound to be controversial because they still have a central role in the country’s constitution. The Queen is the head of state, and the royal family act as this country’s ambassadors. They also have a politically unifying role. Some people may find it easier to respect a head of state like the Queen, who is above party politics. To many people the royal family also embody British history and tradition, and they are still regarded with respect by millions of British and commonwealth citizens. I dare say this is particularly true of Conservatives. I’ve a Conservative friend, who hates the Scum because, in his view, it has done nothing but run down the royal family. And looking at the wretched rag, I can’t say he’s wrong either. Nor is it alone – all of the papers run stories trying to create some controversy about the royal family. The latest of these are about Markle, and how she is apparently throwing her weight around and causing some kind of feud with the rest of the royals.
Farage’s piece of lese majeste Down Under is controversial and offensive because it comes from a politician, who clearly hopes one day to serve in government. If he did, it would surely create tensions between him and the Crown. It’s also impolitic, as even though the culture of deference is supposed to have gone, the constitutional importance of the monarchy means that any criticisms politicians have of the royal family or differences of opinion between them should be settled discreetly. Farage has shown himself to be incapable of maintaining a tactful silence on the matter.
Of course, what Farage really hates about Harry and Megan, along with Conservative rags like the Spectator, is that Harry has dared to be environmentally concerned, like his father. He’s also fallen behind Markle’s feminism, so obviously they despise him for that. And there’s also a nasty tone of racism there was well. They certainly wouldn’t have objected if he’d married a White American. But instead he married a woman of colour. Farage’s apparent view that Harry dressing up as a Nazi officer was just natural masculine hi-jinks shows just how seriously he takes the issue and the offence it caused. I’ve no problem with comedies spoofing the Nazis, like Mel Brooks’ The Producers or the BBC’s ‘Allo, ‘Allo. But the Nazis themselves were far from a joke, and people are quite right to be angry at those who think dressing up as them is a jolly jape. But Farage and his audience obviously don’t. Quite possibly the Conservatives he addressed are still pining for a White Australia policy. But in their environmentalism and their social concerns, Harry and Megan, as Mike says, are just showing themselves to be a modern couple. The monarchy also has to move with the times, whatever reactionaries like Farage like to think.
Farage’s comments aren’t just disrespectful to the royal family, they also show how he places his own political ambitions above them as an institution as well as showing his contempt for the genuinely liberal attitudes Harry and Megan have espoused. I hope they lose him votes with that part of the Conservative-voting public, who still revere the her Maj and the other royals above the sneers of press and media.
Just as the CST this weekend decided to smear 36 people as anti-Semites, largely because they supported Jeremy Corbyn, and hated the Tories, Rachel Riley, and Tom Watson, Times‘ columnist Giles Coren made his own racist comment about Prince Harry’s consort, Megan Markle. Harry had said that he intends to have only two children because of the the current environmental crisis. So Coren jumped in and declared that he really said it because Markle had ‘raised the drawbridge’ and it was really due to domestic squabbles between the royal couple. He then went on and declared that they had booked a meeting with a marriage guidance counselor, but had got Jane Goodall instead.
That’s Jane Goodall, the primatologist, who studied gorillas.
The good peeps on Twitter were not amused, and pointed out just how racist the tweet was. It’s the old sneer about Black people being subhuman monkeys. They also predicted that if Coren was taken to task for it, he’d immediately start trying to excuse it by saying he wasn’t being racist, honest, and then give out some remarks supporting him by his White friends, while issuing some kind of non-apology.
Zelo Street concluded his article on this nasty little piece of privileged racism
From Coren there has so far been silence. But he will have to say something, even if he attempts to cover his tracks by pretending he didn’t mean what he clearly did mean.
Attempts to normalise racism are worrying. Attempts to normalise racism coming from a supposedly quality paper are not just worrying – they are totally inexcusable.
Coren is the Times’ restaurant critic, and like several other ‘slebs, he has quaffed deep of the well of mediocrity. It’s unlikely he would have got his job, and appeared on TV – he was one of the ‘Supersizers’ who every week looked back at the cuisine in different periods of the past with Sue Perkins – if he didn’t come from a privileged background.
He is also sadly not alone in his sneers and abuse at Markle. The I’s Yasmin Alibhai-Brown commented on it in her column in this morning’s edition of the paper. She noted the ugly racism hiding behind these sneers. They’re based on outrage at an American woman of colour with genuinely feminist views marrying into the royal family. How dare she! Especially after she edited Vogue to list the leading, most influential and inspirational women.
I’ve no doubt that part of the sneer also comes from part of the Tory right’s bitter hatred of environmentalism. The Daily Heil published a whole slew of articles a few years ago declaring global warming to be fake, because the Russians apparently said so. And Trump’s government is doing its level, horrendous best to close down and silence the Environmental Protection Agency for the Republicans’ supporters and donors in the petrochemical industry, like the notorious Koch brothers. I’ve got a feeling the Times is one of the other newspapers, whose columnists have tried to discredit climate change. I seem to remember one of the producers of the BBC science documentary series, Horizon, remarking at a talk at the Cheltenham Festival of Science a few years ago how he had been forced toput rightgently another very well established journo, who didn’t believe in it.
I believe a number of members of the royal family are also patrons of the World Wide Fund for Nature, what used to be the World Wildlife Fund, and so do have an interest in conservation. Which would suggest that Harry’s statement on why he was having no more than two sprogs is entirely genuinely. One of the problems is overpopulation, although in the West birthrates are actually falling to or below replacement level, so that there may well be a demographic crisis due to this. Quite apart from all the nutters, who believe that it’s all part of the ‘Great Replacement’ in which the Jews are secretly destroying the White race to replace them with non-White immigrants.
This isn’t the first Coren has expressed noxious, right-wing views either. A little while ago he took it upon himself to sneer at people from council estates. I have no idea why, except perhaps just sheer snobbery. Now he’s found a new target in Megan Markle. And it’s an example of the racism, snobbery and reactionary anti-environmentalism that now permeates and shames the Tory press. And it shows just how nasty the Times has become under Murdoch.
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