Copper Comes A Cropper: Poem on today's Leveson Inquiry

Copper Comes A Cropper
5th March 2012

A little bit of sympathy at the back, there.
Puh-leaze. Let's be 'aving yew.
At the Leveson inquiry
The cruellest moment is when
Sir Paul Stephenson,
The poor put-upon former chief bill
Hobbles in on crutches and drops a pill,
Cutting a pathetic sight
Under the assembled legal might.
So small for a tall man,
Bespectacled nerd
Pinched lips, he can barely cope.
Only a thug like a lawyer
Would punch well-honed words
At a man on the ropes.

He says:
I may be public watchdog eyes and ears but
I wasn't there, never heard a thing,
Couldn't see, except for what the reptiles did to Lord Ian Blair
Stripped bare in the glare of The Sun
And that wasn't going to happen to me.

A loose-lipped minority gossiped
In a distracting dialogue of disharmony,
Dysfunctional, too close for my liking.
But I couldn't do a thing, not a thing.

Ever so humbly, you are
Crediting me with a level of analysis I don't have
I didn't give it any particular thought
No conclusions can be wrought.
It was just something that happened.
Like The Sun coming up in the morning
Shedding light on the scum we turned over.
I am not fawning but we don't investigate someone we know socially
and with whom we are friends.
Except when we did the police officers.
A big boy done it and ran away
And stopped us realising there was anything wrong
When he told us there was no new hack sore.
We adopted a defensive mindset instead of a challenging stance
I can see that now.
It was a cursory glance
Not wide, not deep.
We were asleep.
If only we had the wisdom of hindsight
and weren't caught out
it would all be all right.

I'm not throwing my colleague out of the back of the sleigh and
I can't answer for him but
It would have been wiser presentationally
For him to have done it different.
But he is away in Bahrain and you aren't getting him back in Old Blighty
Until the heat is off,
Until you call off the dogs,
Until the trail has chilled like the champagne we quaffed as we doffed.
Defending and not challenging,
That was the error of our ways.
We are brave and did not back off, guv,
Just because it was News International.

We were logical and needed the polaroids
Coz the tapes and diaries in Glenn's black bags were not enough.
It was the Bahrain runaway who did not reopen the enquiry
He failed, it is regrettable. That's tough.
Fear of taking on a powerful enterprise is not the case.
I did not put the frighteners on the Guardian editor,
Or spray him with Mace,
Or rough him up too much.
Politics over substance
I merely turned up to understand.
But there was no meeting of minds,
My pulse did not race.
You could not get off your face with him
Unlike the real press, proper gents we could have a laugh with
Over a drink and a nice dinner.
Call it folly but Mr Wallis was generous with the Bolly
And Yates of the Yard was fond of his jollies.
I just did not get it and wasn't keeping tally,
The Met caught Chlamedia off Wallis by getting too pally
But we gave him Cressida Dick.

A lack of evidence beyond the lone rogue reporter
Meant rationed resources and an underfunded force
Would not be deployed as a matter of course.
Please give us more dosh if you wish us to wield the cosh.
I was overworked with anti-terrorism,
The Olympics,
Not my decision
A junior did it and is sunning himself in sandy climes.
I am an ill man, I need a week in a spa.
Can you recommend one?

And so they adjourn for another time.

But spare a thought for the thin blue line.
Poor Raisa, disappeared, turned to glue,
Currently starring in a pet food can near you
To stop her singing like a canary,
Squealing like a pig at an inquiry.
Take the porkers she carried;
She knew Cameron's arse inside and out,
Blue heart and stout,
Fullsome about Coulson,
He put it about,
Withdrew when the thin blue sphincter tightened,
Purged the toad and found his load lightened.
Raisa rode bravely into the student throngs they harried
Righting a wrong for the Right,
Got the stomach for a fight when protesters say neigh
And you weigh as much as ten of them
With a bobby on your back.
Truncheoned before luncheon
Unfree by tea
Scuppered before supper
A hack for the hacks
The sack for the lax
When they are found out
Her hooves are all over this
but her head is in some mogul's bed.

Anna Chen 5th March 2012

Boris Johnson and his assistant Kit Malthouse in the frame

Gary McKinnon and the prison system: do not extradite

Crushed under the juggernaut of blind authority

You've seen the Tweets, now read the blog.

Following an interesting discussion with Jack Of Kent about Aspergers hacker Gary McKinnon on Twitter (described by one Tweeter as like Newsnight in haiku) I have a few brief points to make.

I'm totally opposed to extraditing Gary McKinnon to the US, where draconian punishment and prison conditions place their judicial system somewhere in the nastier part of the Middle Ages. Only last night, those of us who watched Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story saw how one juvenile prison faciity was essentially a money-making scam between the judge — sentencing teenagers who behaved like teenagers to the nightmare of being banged up for long periods — and the prison boss, who had lobbied for the old public facility to be demolished so he could replace it with his own privately-built one costing $8 million, for which he was paid $58 million out of the public purse.

The kids' "crimes" included throwing a piece of meat at Mum's boyfriend during a family row, and a fight with a friend in a Mall.

This is a system that also locks up a disproportionate number of black men.

But prisons in the US are big business.

No man or woman's freedom should be bartered away at the whim of blind state power.

Who has determined that Gary McKinnon's hacking into the government's cyberspace is a criminal act? He wasn't a terrorist. He was a bored web-savvy amateur who showed up the flaws in the system before someone actually dangerous found it. His curiosity concerning free energy and UFOs, ferchrissake, was satisfied because the US military and NASA's inept security allowed him in. Governments do enough spying on us — they don't like it up 'em. Isn't it capitulating to overweening state authority to say his mischief was an actual crime? It's out of all proportion in a civilised society.

In an interview straight out of Monty Python, one senior military officer at the Pentagon said: "He did very serious and deliberate damage to military and Nasa computers and left silly and anti-American messages." So which is he being done for? Damage? (Under the terms of the 2003 Extradition Act, the US doesn't have to produce contestable evidence.) Or the sort of two-fingers-to-authority that in the free West we once thought quite romantic?

The Wiki account says:

McKinnon has denied causing any damage, arguing that, in his quest for UFO-related material, he accessed open, unsecured machines with no passwords and no firewalls and that he left countless notes pointing out their many security failings. He adamantly disputes the damage and the financial loss claimed by the US as concocted in order to create a dollar amount justifying an extraditable offence. While it did not constitute evidence of destruction, he did admit leaving a threat on one computer:
"US foreign policy is akin to government-sponsored terrorism these days? It was not a mistake that there was a huge security stand-down on September 11 last year...I am SOLO. I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels.”

But did he continue to disrupt? Should you be extradited for bravado? Is it true what he said about government-sponsored terrorism? And should the "dollar amount" be a determining factor in extradition?

All the things that the Masters and Mistresses of the Universe do, with no possibility of redress for us, and yet here's a man's life about to be destroyed, effectively out of spite. Blair, Haliburton, the oil corps et al are enriched through behaviour that would be criminal if only they weren't making the rules. Compare Gary's video-gamer's excitement with the Apache helicopter crew waggling their joysticks, who massacred a crowd in Iraq including two Reuters employees. Or the greed machines currently destroying the whole coast of Louisiana and beyond.

The Labour government rolled over and did the US neocon regime's bidding over the Iraq War, colluded in rendition and torture, and then tried to deliver its own civilians to a foreign power.

We are encountering a massive juggernaut of authority with no morality backing it up. This is wrong. We should not be actively collaborating in our own oppression.

UPDATE: QC Geoffrey Robertson on Gary McKinnon and the US government's restrospective malice: a test case for principles. He points out that Stieg Larsson's Girl With The Dragon Tattoo heroine, Lisbeth Salander, would be extradited for the same activity.

Gary McKinnon and the prison system: do not extradite

Crushed under the juggernaut of blind authority

You've seen the Tweets, now read the blog.

Following an interesting discussion with Jack Of Kent about Aspergers hacker Gary McKinnon on Twitter (described by one Tweeter as like Newsnight in haiku) I have a few brief points to make.

I'm totally opposed to extraditing Gary McKinnon to the US, where draconian punishment and prison conditions place their judicial system somewhere in the nastier part of the Middle Ages. Only last night, those of us who watched Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story saw how one juvenile prison faciity was essentially a money-making scam between the judge — sentencing teenagers who behaved like teenagers to the nightmare of being banged up for long periods — and the prison boss, who had lobbied for the old public facility to be demolished so he could replace it with his own privately-built one costing $8 million, for which he was paid $58 million out of the public purse.

The kids' "crimes" included throwing a piece of meat at Mum's boyfriend during a family row, and a fight with a friend in a Mall.

This is a system that also locks up a disproportionate number of black men.

But prisons in the US are big business.

No man or woman's freedom should be bartered away at the whim of blind state power.

Who has determined that Gary McKinnon's hacking into the government's cyberspace is a criminal act? He wasn't a terrorist. He was a bored web-savvy amateur who showed up the flaws in the system before someone actually dangerous found it. His curiosity concerning free energy and UFOs, ferchrissake, was satisfied because the US military and NASA's inept security allowed him in. Governments do enough spying on us — they don't like it up 'em. Isn't it capitulating to overweening state authority to say his mischief was an actual crime? It's out of all proportion in a civilised society.

In an interview straight out of Monty Python, one senior military officer at the Pentagon said: "He did very serious and deliberate damage to military and Nasa computers and left silly and anti-American messages." So which is he being done for? Damage? (Under the terms of the 2003 Extradition Act, the US doesn't have to produce contestable evidence.) Or the sort of two-fingers-to-authority that in the free West we once thought quite romantic?

The Wiki account says:

McKinnon has denied causing any damage, arguing that, in his quest for UFO-related material, he accessed open, unsecured machines with no passwords and no firewalls and that he left countless notes pointing out their many security failings. He adamantly disputes the damage and the financial loss claimed by the US as concocted in order to create a dollar amount justifying an extraditable offence. While it did not constitute evidence of destruction, he did admit leaving a threat on one computer:
"US foreign policy is akin to government-sponsored terrorism these days? It was not a mistake that there was a huge security stand-down on September 11 last year...I am SOLO. I will continue to disrupt at the highest levels.”

But did he continue to disrupt? Should you be extradited for bravado? Is it true what he said about government-sponsored terrorism? And should the "dollar amount" be a determining factor in extradition?

All the things that the Masters and Mistresses of the Universe do, with no possibility of redress for us, and yet here's a man's life about to be destroyed, effectively out of spite. Blair, Haliburton, the oil corps et al are enriched through behaviour that would be criminal if only they weren't making the rules. Compare Gary's video-gamer's excitement with the Apache helicopter crew waggling their joysticks, who massacred a crowd in Iraq including two Reuters employees. Or the greed machines currently destroying the whole coast of Louisiana and beyond.

The Labour government rolled over and did the US neocon regime's bidding over the Iraq War, colluded in rendition and torture, and then tried to deliver its own civilians to a foreign power.

We are encountering a massive juggernaut of authority with no morality backing it up. This is wrong. We should not be actively collaborating in our own oppression.

UPDATE: QC Geoffrey Robertson on Gary McKinnon and the US government's restrospective malice: a test case for principles. He points out that Stieg Larsson's Girl With The Dragon Tattoo heroine, Lisbeth Salander, would be extradited for the same activity.