Motley Moose – Archive

Thanks to Ivorybill in Green Square for the image.

Yet to be double sourced, but if true, this is good news for the Arab Spring, Human Rights and International Law – according to Reuters

Deposed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has been captured and wounded in both legs, National Transitional Council official Abdel Majid said on Thursday.

“He’s captured. He’s wounded in both legs … He’s been taken away by ambulance,” the senior NTC military official told Reuters by telephone.

I hope he recovers and is put on trial. As anyone who has followed my diaries on this knows, I think UN intervention in Libya was necessary under the Responsiblity to Protect doctrine and to support the Arab Spring. I think Power, Rice and Clinton played a blinder by persuading Obama to join France, the UK and the Arab League in degrading Gaddafi’s army.

For more on the politics behind the scenes of that decision, do read the Rolling Stone piece Inside Obama’s War Room

Al Jazeera is running this. Rumours of death in a hospital in Misrata might not be incompatible with such a severe injury:

Libyan TV is reporting that Muammar Gaddafi has been captured by NTC fighters in Sirte.

Jamal abu-Shaalah, a field commander of NTC, told told Al Jazeera that the toppled leader had been seized, but it was not clear whether he was dead or alive.

Gaddafi is captured and is wounded in both legs, Abdel Majid, another NTC official, told the Reuters news agency.

“He’s captured. He’s wounded in both legs … He’s been taken away by ambulance,” the senior NTC military official said.

An NTC official also said that Abu Bakr Younus Jabr, the head of Gaddafi’s armed forces, was killed during the capture of Gaddafi.

As you probably all know, the Square Mile of the City of London is the world’s second biggest financial centre, and ever since the mid 80s has very much followed suit in the Thatcher Reagan concoction of deregulated markets, fluid global finance, strange derivatives, and the sharp increase in wealth inequality that comes from the ‘Anglo Saxon Model’. Indeed, the problems of the last three years are very much an international problem, with a transatlantic origin. So it’s about time the Occupy London movement took root.

I live on the edge of the City, only a ten minute walk from St Paul’s where the demonstrations began at Noon today, so it hardly showed great radical commitment to head down there, be a witness and a supporter, before heading back to diary what I saw. I would have stayed, but my daughter is not well, and I didn’t want to get ‘kettled’ (contained) by the police, and unable to look after her this evening.

So here are some images. It is a preternaturally warm day here in London, and the crowds were pleasant, well behaved and peaceful. It was a great mix of people

This is partially inspired by a conversation on Labour List, the premier British Left of Centre blog, where a version of the Political Compass Test was taken by several diverse commenters.

Now most people who visit the political blogosphere know the parameters of that test: authoritarian/libertarian, socially interventionist/economically interventionist. Like Myers-Briggs, these are static and almost self fulfilling quadrants which test how much you believe in individual freedom versus social responsibility, whether in crime, foreign affairs, the economy, gun ownership or reproductive rights. We all know the tests, and probably where we come out in them.

I think that the events of the last three years make that compass profoundly irrelevant, an old paradigm which can only provide a direction in an outdated map. Follow me below the fold while I suggest that the old metrics no longer apply and we are in a new world looking for new bearings.  

Hackgate: A Pattern of Criminal  Behaviour

Yes, the Murdoch story may be flying under the mainstream media radar, but with three British police investigations ongoing, two Parliamentary committees, a televised public enquiry with full powers of subpoena starting tomorrow, a DOJ enquiry stateside, and other investigations and legal cases in the US, Australia and Italy into Newscorp anti-competitive and/or criminal behaviour, this is not about to go away any time soon.

As an early indication of this, it has just been announced that over sixty separate claims (some filed in multiple names) have been filed in the UK civil claims court against News International: these include dozens of celebrities and prominent politicians, but also the families or partners of murder victims, or casualties of other high profile incidents such as the 7/7 London bombings.

These weren’t people who thrust themselves into the limelight – but people who had already been violated by some awful event, only to have their own privacy violated by illegal means by a company whose only interest was profit and using press exposure to exert political power.

Bernstein on the Watergate Analogy and the Culture of Lawlessness

If you think the Watergate analogy is hyperbolical or fanciful, don’t forget it was first made by Carl Bernstein himself in The Daily Beast nearly three months ago

The circumstances of the alleged lawbreaking within News Corp. suggest more than a passing resemblance to Richard Nixon presiding over a criminal conspiracy in which he insulated himself from specific knowledge of numerous individual criminal acts while being himself responsible for and authorizing general policies that routinely resulted in lawbreaking and unconstitutional conduct. Not to mention his role in the cover-up. It will remain for British authorities and, presumably, disgusted and/or legally squeezed News Corp. executives and editors to reveal exactly where the rot came from at News of the World, and whether Rupert Murdoch enabled, approved, or opposed the obvious corruption that infected his underlings.

And here he is, in a Guardian interview today where he makes the same point

The parallels with Watergate… Had to do with the culture itself that made this possible. In the Nixon Whitehouse Nixon was responsible for the sensibility that permeated the place, that had to do with unconstitutional acts with a cynicism about the political process and how it was practised, and a disregard for the law. And it became apparent to me, as I read more and more what was happening here, that really at bottom what this hacking furore is about, it’s about a culture in the newsroom that has nothing to do with real journalism, real reporting (which is very simply put the best obtainable version of the truth) but rather has to do with serving up both the lowest common denominator of information and calling it news, and obtaining it through a methodology which is outrageous, whether you’re talking about hacking or other kinds of invasions of privacy, and that the atmosphere in that newsroom is a product of the culture that Murdoch in the News of the World .

This needs must be quick because the unofficial news has just hit the street, but for those of you who think Holder and the Department of Justice aren’t taking the what Gordon Brown has called the ‘criminal media nexus’ seriously, Bloomberg just has this

News Corp. was sent a letter by U.S. prosecutors investigating foreign bribery, requesting information on alleged payments employees made to U.K. police for tips, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

The letter is part of an effort by the U.S. Justice Department to determine whether News Corp. violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, or FCPA, according to the person, who declined to be identified because the matter isn’t public. News Corp. fell 1.7 percent on the news.

This is part of a series of suggested essays from Dkos exploring the issues set out in Denise Oliver Velez’s diary this Sunday Race and Racism: Barriers and Bridges.

One of the joys of returning after a week’s absence is to see that the issue of racism on this site and further afield has come into sharper focus. As I explained in my boycott diary, race is not everything, but anti-racism has been key to my political awakening and adult life.

But enough of that. In this diary I’m writing as a straight middle aged white man, and I want to explore what it’s like – as a straight middle aged white man – to be called a racist.

This is something the majority of commenters on Kos must have feared, experienced and witnessed – and a bit of self analysis on our reaction to that is probably overdue.

1. It succeeded. Page counts.

2. I’m not sure I’ll go back. Avoid meta, hiddens. Too toxic

3. Most people will welcome you back. Missed you. A tiny If we’re met with a wall of hostility. Make this clear

I might cross post. The main thing will be: the Boycott was a success. No one thought so many lurkers would follow. It highlighted an issue graphically. I will write to those who don’t want to return: I completely understand. Once you’re out of the hate, you feel like your life is revived. The air is clearer.

For those going back; the majority who believe in diverse debate will welcome you back. If you are met with hostility from some, then they aren’t progressives or really liberals. What liberal or progressive jeers at strikers when they return to work, or marchers when they leave their sit in?  Progressives support collective action, even if they don’t join in a particular demo.

If you’re met with hostility and sneers, these people are defining themselves as non inclusive, as anti progressive, as people who don’t believe in a broad tent and group organisation. These people are doing you a favour. They are revealing their true motives. And that’s the great thing about collective struggle, Realities are made clea

We long time Moosers may have supported the boycott, but did so spontaneously last Sunday. None of us planned it. All of us were amazed how many of you came over to the Moose. But we’re not in competition with Kos, a small homely blog like this could be any kind of replacement.

Final note: many cross post, including a senior DKos front pager, criticise the tone of debate in recent months, but not the site itself.

One comment a whole conspiracy among hundreds of Moosers to destroy DKos. I believe the comment was misconstrued and misrepresented. Anyone can read this public blog and see it’s total tosh. I’ll just repeat

So have a good return those of you who venture back. I hope you’ll always consider the Moose your  home in the countryside, somewhere you can come and meet friends down the local pub, and always have a civil and interesting debate. If you don’t come back, we’ll understand but miss ya. If you do, we’ll welcome you with open arms.

Thanks for this week. It’s been a ball.  

Forgive me for reprinting this diary from December 08, but it’s just to start a conversation about what the Moose stands for – especially now we have plenty of new members.

So please use the ramblings below to put your points of view across. The new comment thread starts here

Still recovering from this last amazing year, I’ve been reading the works of the original progressive blogfather. No I don’t mean the proprietor of MYDD, but the guy who effectively coined the term ‘Progressive‘. He was a Brit too – naturellement – one of the earliest and most vocal proponents of feminism and female equality, and also a bit of a looker.

Partly as a welcome to new members, and partly because the article is now behind a paywall and I’ve never posted it here, I’ll post below a piece I wrote about the collective origins of the Moose during the 2008 primaries.

It was written for a non-blogging UK audience, so most of it will be quite obvious to a lot of Meese. But worth a bit of reflection three years on.

Flaming for Obama

This year’s Democratic primaries weren’t just fought on the hustings and in the television studios. Some of the fiercest battles took place in the blogosphere