Nick Davies's Blog, page 2
October 14, 2015
Stephen Harper: master manipulator | Nick Davies
Despite several scandals worthy of Watergate over the past decade, Stephen Harper could win a fourth Canadian election next week. Can the master manipulator work his dark magic? By Nick Davies
An unkind cartoon this summer showed the Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper, kneeling before the statue of another politician, asking: “What now, O Great One?” That in itself would not be unkind. The punchline is that the statue is clearly labelled as that of Richard Nixon, famed above all for his attempts to corrupt democracy.
As Harper tries for a fourth term in office at the Canadian federal election next week, he is trailed by an extraordinarily long list of allegations. In the Watergate scandal, all the president’s men were accused primarily of breaking the law to get Nixon a second term in the White House. In Canada, some of the prime minister’s men and women have been accused not simply of cheating to win elections but of conspiring to jam the machinery of democratic government.
Related: Canada election 2015: a guide to the parties, polls and electoral system
Harper has perfected the tactics of taking and holding power – in spite of the demands of democracy
Harper is a loner – a suburban boy who went trainspotting with his dad; whose asthma stopped him playing ice hockey
Harper has his roots in the same ideological soil as Thatcher and Reagan: cutting tax and rolling back the state
Soon after taking power in 2006, Harper started to clamp down on research into global warming
Continue reading...
October 7, 2015
Britain's water crisis | Nick Davies
Overuse, pollution and climate change are threatening the survival of the river Ouse in East Sussex. But this is not just a local crisis, the water supply for the whole of Britain is in jeopardy
Jim Smith has been walking the banks of the Ouse for 52 years, since he was 19 years old. For many of those years, he was officially the keeper of the river, hired by the local angling society to watch over the water and its banks. He is retired now, but he still walks and he still notices.
There are not many left like Smith. He is a man who knows when the winter has turned harsh in Scandinavia because he hears the wigeons outside his window at night, making that little whistling noise as they arrive in the UK in search of milder air; who knows he should stop and stand quietly when he notices two male adders on the river bank and watches them dancing, twining their bodies together in a contest for dominance. Smith knows how the river flows and how the animals who live in it and beside it behave. He is also acutely aware of what is happening around it, of threats and tensions, of the subtle impact of private profit and public bureaucracy. On several occasions while we were out walking this summer, he told me that he was worried, frightened even.
To see fish dying in the river is a bit disconcerting. The fish are part of the ecosystem. If that goes, you have had it
He realised that the river had invaded the town when tins of biscuits and video cassettes started careering downstream
Continue reading...May 18, 2015
Marikana massacre: the untold story of the strike leader who died for workers’ rights | Nick Davies
On 16 August 2012, South African police opened fire on a large crowd of men who had walked out on strike from a platinum mine at Marikana, about 80 miles north of Johannesburg. They shot down 112 of them, killing 34. In any country, this would have been a traumatic moment. For South Africa, it was a special kind of nightmare, since it revived images of massacres by the state in the old apartheid era, with one brutal difference – this time it was predominantly black policemen, with black senior officers working for black politicians, who were doing the shooting.
In response, President Jacob Zuma appointed a commission of inquiry, chaired by a retired judge, Ian Farlam, which eventually sat in public for a total of 293 days, hearing evidence from miners, their bosses and the police, and reviewing video, audio and paper records of the shooting and of the seven-day strike that preceded it. At the end of March this year, the commission delivered its report to Zuma, who so far has failed to publish its conclusions. Those who may find themselves accused of colluding in the police action include not only senior figures from the ruling African National Congress but also Lonmin, the British company that owns the Marikana mine.
One striker shot through the head from an assault rifle at a distance of more than 70 metres
Ramaphosa, the former union leader, could have argued for negotiation. Instead he argued for the police to move in
Continue reading...April 21, 2015
Vietnam 40 years on: how a communist victory gave way to capitalist corruption
After the military victory, Vietnam’s socialist model began to collapse. Cut off by US-led trade embargos and denied reconstruction aid, it plunged into poverty. Now its economy is booming – but so is inequality and corruption
Early one morning in February 1968, when the fighting in central Vietnam had reached a new level of insanity, a group of South Korean soldiers swept into a village called Ha My, a straggly collection of bamboo huts and paddy fields about an hour outside the city of Danang. They were from a unit called Blue Dragon, which was fighting alongside the Americans, attempting to suppress the communist uprising.
Related: Forty years on from the fall of Saigon: witnessing the end of the Vietnam war
We already had in mind the society we wanted – one where men would not exploit other men: fair, independent, equal
Related: Vietnam: The Real War, a photographic history by the Associated Press – in pictures
Related: 'Did they survive?': children of the Vietnam war, 50 years on
Three decades after the communist victory, Vietnam was part of the global capitalist economy. The west had won after all
Related: Laos suffers lethal legacy of Vietnam war
We traded millions of lives for independence and equality. I imagined corruption would end after the war, but it didn’t
Related: Vietnam war: share your stories, photographs and memories
Continue reading...Vietnam 40 years on: how a communist victory gave way to capitalist corruption
After the military victory, Vietnam’s socialist model began to collapse. Cut off by US-led trade embargos and denied reconstruction aid, it plunged into poverty. Now its economy is booming – but so is inequality and corruption
Early one morning in February 1968, when the fighting in central Vietnam had reached a new level of insanity, a group of South Korean soldiers swept into a village called Ha My, a straggly collection of bamboo huts and paddy fields about an hour outside the city of Danang. They were from a unit called Blue Dragon, which was fighting alongside the Americans, attempting to suppress the communist uprising.
Related: Forty years on from the fall of Saigon: witnessing the end of the Vietnam war
We already had in mind the society we wanted – one where men would not exploit other men: fair, independent, equal
Related: Vietnam: The Real War, a photographic history by the Associated Press – in pictures
Related: 'Did they survive?': children of the Vietnam war, 50 years on
Three decades after the communist victory, Vietnam was part of the global capitalist economy. The west had won after all
Related: Laos suffers lethal legacy of Vietnam war
We traded millions of lives for independence and equality. I imagined corruption would end after the war, but it didn’t
Related: Vietnam war: share your stories, photographs and memories
Continue reading...April 6, 2015
At this election, British politicians can afford to speak out against Rupert Murdoch | Nick Davies
In the past all parties have played it safe but after the phone-hacking scandal, with its exposure of the abuse of power, they have nothing to lose but their fear
Five years ago, as he prepared to fight the general election of May 2010, the then prime minister, Gordon Brown, instructed officials to write him a particularly risky speech. It attacked the press. More than that, it attacked Rupert and James Murdoch by name, defending the BBC against their constant sniping, ridiculing the younger Murdoch’s obsession with profit, and calling for a new approach to the regulation of their papers. “It was a shot across the Murdoch bows,” according to one of the officials who worked on it. But Brown never delivered it.
Since April 1979, no British government has been elected without the support of Rupert Murdoch. That does not necessarily mean that it was Murdoch who won each battle. The facts and figures are too complex for such a simple conclusion. What it means is that politicians fear that his power may possibly be decisive, and so they play safe with him. At least, they persuade themselves that they are safe.
Related: Rupert Murdoch deemed 'not a fit person' to run international company
Politicians may as well protest against news companies that act as if it were their job to decide who runs the country
Continue reading...July 28, 2014
Bullying and hypocrisy – Andy Coulson’s reign at the News of the World
In 2005, Andy Coulson was the award-winning editor of the News of the World, presiding over a culture of ruthless exploitation. In the second extract from his new book Hack Attack, Nick Davies examines a world where there was only one rule – get the story at any cost
• The pervasive power of Rupert Murdoch: the first extract from Hack Attack
Andy Coulson had a good view from his office. Sitting at his desk, he could look out through his glass wall and see the beating heart of the News of the World. Right in front of him was the “back bench” – the row of desks where he would often sit with his lieutenants, filtering all the material that was being pumped into the paper from news agencies and freelancers and from his own staff, making the decisions that shaped the paper.
Beyond the back bench, he could see the picture desk and then the news desk where several executives ran the news reporters who were cramped together in a group on the far side of the room and, next to them, the sub-editors who would check their stories and write their headlines. Around the edges of the newsroom were the feature writers, the sports writers, offices for a few other executives and a special cubicle for the royal editor, Clive Goodman. This was Coulson’s world, and he ruled it. But that wasn’t the best part of the view.
Continue reading...Bullying and hypocrisy Andy Coulsons reign at the News of the World
In 2005, Andy Coulson was the award-winning editor of the News of the World, presiding over a culture of ruthless exploitation. In the second extract from his new book Hack Attack, Nick Davies examines a world where there was only one rule get the story at any cost
The pervasive power of Rupert Murdoch: the first extract from Hack Attack
Andy Coulson had a good view from his office. Sitting at his desk, he could look out through his glass wall and see the beating heart of the News of the World. Right in front of him was the back bench the row of desks where he would often sit with his lieutenants, filtering all the material that was being pumped into the paper from news agencies and freelancers and from his own staff, making the decisions that shaped the paper.
Beyond the back bench, he could see the picture desk and then the news desk where several executives ran the news reporters who were cramped together in a group on the far side of the room and, next to them, the sub-editors who would check their stories and write their headlines. Around the edges of the newsroom were the feature writers, the sports writers, offices for a few other executives and a special cubicle for the royal editor, Clive Goodman. This was Coulsons world, and he ruled it. But that wasnt the best part of the view.
Continue reading...July 26, 2014
Nick Davies: 'Murdoch and his papers have done incalculable damage' - Video
Nick Davies: 'Murdoch and his papers have done incalculable damage' - Video
• The pervasive power of Rupert Murdoch
• Andy Coulson's reign at the News of the World Continue reading...
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