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Today's Stories October 23, 2006 Saree Makdisi Joshua Frank Fred Gardner Ralph Nader Ron Jacobs Norman Solomon Richard Manning Gilad Atzmon Werther Website of the Day
October 20 / 22, 2006 Alexander Cockburn Gary Leupp Brian Cloughley Dave Zirin William Blum Christopher
Brauchli Winslow Wheeler Michael Donnelly Fred Gardner Susie Day Lucinda Marshall Fred Wilcox Alan Maass Lee Sustar Ariadna Theokopoulos Missy Beattie CP News Wire CP News Services Poets' Basement Website of
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October 19, 2006 Elaine Cassel Col. Dan Smith Manuel Garcia, Jr. Josh Gryniewicz Amira Hass Eric Holt-Gimenez Jesse Hagopian Sam Husseini John Weisheit CP News Service Website of
the Day Art Gallery
of the Day
October 18, 2006 Joshua Frank Dr. Curran
Warf, MD Saul Landau Tom Barry Bruce Jackson Dave Lindorff Frederico Fuentes Michael Simmons Daryll E. Ray Kate Doyle Website of
the Day
Michael Neumann Manuel Garcia,
Jr. Stephen S.
Pearcy Sharon Smith Al Krebs David Underhill Daniel Wolff James Brooks Website of the Day
October 16, 2006 Gary Leupp Patrick Cockburn David Wilson Robert Fisk Robert Jensen Ingmar Lee
/ Krista Roessingh Mike Whitney Jake Whitney Sanho Tree Website of
the Day
Uri Avnery John Walsh Jean Bricmont Jennifer Van Bergen Ralph Nader Floyd Rudmin Mark Weisbrot Laura Carlsen Hani Shukrallah Dr. Susan Block John Chuckman Lucinda Marshall Don Monkerud Missy Comley
Beattie Ron Jacobs Website of
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October 13, 2006 Jorge Mariscal Stephen Philion John Blair Col. Dan Smith Alastair Crooke / Mark Perry Stephen Fleischman Charles Perroud Anne E. Brodsky Website of the Day
October 12, 2006 Jonathan Cook Norman Solomon M. Shahid Alam Paul Craig
Roberts Meredith Schafer / Chris Kutalik Carl Gelderloos Alastair Crooke / Mark Perry Charles Sullivan William S. Lind CP News Service Website of
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October 11, 2006 John Feffer Dave Lindorff Jackson Katz April Howard / Ben Dangl Michael Carmichael Ken Couesbouc Gregory Afghani Alexander Cockburn Website of
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October 10, 2006 Paul Craig
Roberts Robert Robideau Joshua Frank Dave Lindorff Dave Zirin Heather Gray James Knotwell Missy Beattie Mike Whitney David Rosen Website of the Day
Robert Fisk Norman Solomon Ron Jacobs Gideon Levy Walter Brasch Mickey Z. John Holt Lucinda Marshall Saul Landau Website of the Day
October 7 /
8, 2006 Alexander Cockburn Peter Kwong Ralph Nader Mark Donham Dave Lindorff Peter Bosshard Ron Jacobs Lawrence R.
Velvel Fred Gardner David Green Jim B. Missy Beattie Michael Donnelly Jackson Thoreau Jon Hung CounterPunch
News Service Tom D'Antoni Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
Alison Weir Tiffany Ten
Eyck / Mark Brenner Corporate Crime Reporter Juan Antonio
Montecino Walden Bello Christopher
Brauchli Brynne Keith-Jennings Jonathan Cook Website of the Day
John Walsh Carol Norris Paul Craig Roberts Ricardo Alarcón James Abourezk Nicola Nasser Kirkpatrick Sale Uri Avnery Website of the Day
Elizabeth Terzakis Paul Wolf Sean Penn Dave Lindorff Diane Farsetta Sharon Smith Felice Pace Sara Roy Website of
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October 2, 2006 Eric Hazan Mike Whitney Norman Solomon Assaf Kfoury Missy Beattie Arthur Neslen Paula J. Caplan Website of the Day
Sept. 30 /
0ct. 1, 2006 Paul Craig
Roberts Marjorie Cohn Ben Tripp Ron Jacobs Ralph Nader Mike Whitney Christopher Reed Seth Sandronsky Fred Gardner Mokhiber /
Weissman Michael Dickinson Alan Gregory Poets' Basement
September 29, 2006 Bruce Jackson Michael J.
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Lind David Swanson Jonathan Cook Website of the Day
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/ 24, 2006 Jonathan Cook Jeffrey St.
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Alberts Jon Van Camp Heather Gray David Vest Jeffrey St.
Clair Poets' Basement Website of
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September 22, 2006 Patrick Cockburn Michael Donnelly Ramzy Baroud Evo Morales Stanley Howard Sarah Leah
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Khan Ron Jacobs Nik Barry-Shaw
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October 23, 2006 The Socialist, the Columnist, His Wife and the ProstituteEven Scotland Can Be Thrilled by a Ripe Sex ScandalBy WILLIAM MacDOUGALL
Standing outside the Court of Session in Edinburgh on the fourth of August, Scottish Socialist MSP Tommy Sheridan delivered his own verdict on the Scottish edition of News International's News of the World (NOTW) in Scotland after a jury of 11 took just two and a half hours to find in the politician's favour after 23 days of testimony in one of the more bizarre libel actions ever brought in a British court. Here was a political story that had everything. The principled working-class politician and the prostitute, the allegations of adultery with a tabloid journalist, hotel-room orgies and swinger club visits, alleged tabloid intrigue and a political party tearing itself apart in public. Little wonder then, that the story captured the Scottish public's attention and had the local press --and in the closing stages, the UK nationwide media--reeling in dizzy anticipation as each day in the courts brought forward more bizarre and fantastic stories screaming out to be put on the next day's front pages or at the top of that day's radio and television news. Describing the jury verdict as "perverse", News of the World in Scotland editor Bob Bird said, "This result suggest that 18 independent witnesses came to this court and committed monstrous acts of perjury. We simply cannot accept that this is what happened." (At the time of writing, an appeal has been formally lodged with the Court of Session by the newspaper.) The 42 year old politician was delivering his victory speech after successfully being awarded £200,000 damages from the Scottish red-top for claims of adultery, kinky group sex, swinging and cocaine snorting. Widely held by political friend and foe alike to be a man of unusual political conviction and integrity, the Scottish Socialist party co-founder and former leader was previously best known for leading the Scottish Militant Labour revolt against Margaret Thatcher's much-detested poll tax in the 1990s. Prior to the tabloid allegations, Sheridan's only weakness had been his self-confessed penchant for sun-beds. All a far cry from the politician's public image as the teetotal, amateur football-playing MSP; a Glaswegian born and raised in one of Glasgow's most deprived districts; a man who drew only half of his salary, giving the rest to his funds-stricken party when not busy protesting outside Scotland's Faslane nuclear naval base. The sorry chronology goes something like this. In October 2004, The Scottish News of the World ran a story about an unnamed MSP who had visited a Manchester sex club and had an affair with one of its regular columnists, Anvar Khan, the claims being extracted from her then still unpublished book "Pretty Wild (The Most Honest Diary About Men, Women And Sex You Will Ever Read)". In the story published, the "busty 37-year-old" columnist revealed how the "mystery MSP liked to be SPANKED, enjoyed ROMPING at swingers' parties and even asked her to arrange a THREESOME." The NOTW's sex columnist gave
the MSP (referred to in her book as "Patrick"), her
number after meeting him in an Edinburgh bar in May 2001 (Sheridan
was married in 2000). According to Khan, they met a month later
for dinner, before meeting again two weeks later where they had
"the worst kind of drunk sex you could ever have. While
he was lying on my bed afterwards he spotted a pair of red PVC
gloves. He asked me to put them on and then begged me to give
him a spanking." Driving to Manchester with several friends and a woman very obviously not the MSP's wife, she watched as one of the men massaged the woman's breasts. The woman was all the while busy "performing a sex act on Patrick as he drove." She didn't hear from "Patrick" again until she had returned to Scotland to work for News International, claiming in the original article that "I think he was panicking because I'd started my News of the World column and he was worried I'd spill the beans." Sheridan resigned his position as party convenor on 11th November 2004 for "personal reasons" and to ostensibly spend more time with his family (his wife was expecting their first child at the time). Just a matter of days later (and acting on an earlier tip-off from freelance investigative journalist Allan Caldwell that Sheridan had been seen in a hot-tub with two women in Cupids as long ago as 2002), the newspaper carried a story ("My kinky 4-in-a-bed orgy with Tommy") based on interviews secretly recorded with SSP party activist Fiona McGuire by news editor Douglas Wight (McGuire was paid £20,000 for her kiss-and-tell story). "He liked you to dominate him. He liked uniforms. He liked whipping just a little bit, at the top of his legs" claimed McGuire. McGuire, a self-confessed "party girl" and former prostitute who also went by the name "Christy Babe" when working as an escort girl, claimed to have first met Sheridan at an SSP activist's house in 2000 whilst "under the influence of copious amounts of drugs and alcohol." This initial meeting, she claimed, would later lead to further trysts between the two in a number of Aberdeen and Glasgow hotels as well as her eventual five-in-a-bed sex and cocaine revelations. Cited as evidence for the defence by the NOTW in the first week of the trail, the 32 year old mother of three's taped interview painted a seduction worthy of Barbara Cartland's pen. "We ordered strawberries and champagne. He said I had really beautiful eyes and I had a naughtiness. He was a very considerate lover." Giving evidence during the second week of the trial, she confessed to giving a "romantic view" of their meetings, as the reality was "too degrading". (In the course of the trial, McGuire was revealed to have slept between 200 and 300 men and was accused in court of being a "fantasist" and "gold digger". One further bizarre development saw McGuire's ex-husband reveal in a rival Scottish Sunday how she had tricked him into marrying her by pretending to have leukaemia--"Fiona is a money-grabbing fantasist" he told the Scottish Sunday Mail). Challenged in court by Sheridan about "telling lies about people" and having invented a source (the "My kinky 4-in-a-bed orgy with Tommy" revelations were attributed to a friend rather than McGuire), NOTW editor Bob Bird refuted these and Sheridan's other contentions that McGuire was pressurised into green-lighting the allegations despite previously having gotten "cold feet" and an earlier suicide attempt, claiming that he was "100 per cent happy" that the "core" of the story was true (albeit with the caveat that McGuire's court testimony was at odds with what she had originally told NOTW reporters). Giving testimony as to the credulity of McGuire, Douglas Wight --who conducted interviews with McGuire and another woman who claimed to have seen Sheridan engaged in group sex in a Glasgow hotel for the NOTW--observed that "She obviously had certain issues going on in her life, but not unstable." (It was a pertinent line of enquiry also used by Sheridan to considerable rhetorical effect, claiming in court that: "They endangered my wife, they endangered my child and --you know what --they endangered Fiona McGuire as well. They couldn't care less because the bottom line is selling newspapers.") Sheridan admitted to a brief
relationship with Khan in 1992, but rejected claims that he cheated
on his wife, whom he married in 2000, with the Glasgow journalist.
Khan admitted in court that, although the article referred to
Sheridan, "there are elements of the puff which can relate
to reality and there are other parts which cannot." The
strict teetotaller wasn't in fact drunk, nor had he taken drugs
or asked to be spanked. On day 17 of the trial, National Union of Journalists (NUJ) official Paul Holloran claimed that Khan had contacted the NUJ when asked by the NOTW to sign an affidavit to provide court testimony. According to Holloran, the journalist, whose contract with the NOTW was up for renewal at the time in question, was "concerned that her contract was not going to be renewed unless she cooperated with the demands of the editor [Bob Bird]. (Holloran's decision to pass on this information to Sheridan's legal team raises important ethical questions about NUJ client confidentiality which are another matter entirely.) She signed the affidavit on 17 November 2004 (three days after the story outing Sheridan as the swinging MSP), after a lawyer acting on the NOTW's behalf brought it to her Glasgow home. "I was under a lot of attack in the press and I agreed with Bob [Bird] to sign the affidavit to protect myself." Tellingly, Khan could not recall telling the man from the NUJ that she had signed the legal document in order to continue working for the newspaper, but did concede that the newspaper had brought great pressure to bear. So far, so cut and dried. Any seasoned media-watcher would see that the whole thing was quite obviously an elaborate tabloid stitch-up. What else could it be when defence witness testimony was proven to be flimsier than the flimsiest house of cards and key witnesses included not only primary beneficiaries of chequebook journalism, but also a freelance journalist who had not only added colour to her allegations, but had tried to sell the story to another newspaper and whose contract with the NOTW had at the time been up for renewal? An open and shut case one would have thought, were it not but for the fact that witnesses for News International's defence also included members of Sheridan's own political party: party members who claimed that Sheridan had in fact confessed to visiting a swinger's club when first confronted about rumours in 2002. The SSP claims that rumours about Sheridan visiting a Manchester sex club first started circulating in late 2001. Confronted by SSP National Policy and Press Coordinator Alan McCombes about the allegations, Sheridan denied them outright. Long-time Sheridan political friend and ally Keith Baldassara was told the same story by a neighbour in Sheridan's Glasgow Pollok constituency. This time Sheridan, who Baldassara claims was "evasive" and "uncomfortable", did not deny the claims, but instead assured Baldassara that there was nothing to worry about, and that it would never go public. In November 2002, Sheridan allegedly advised Baldassara that he had been back to Cupids in Manchester, and that some sections of the media were on to it. Baldassara met McCombes to advise him of this and another alleged incident at Glasgow's Moat House Hotel, where two women--who later tried to sell their stories --claimed to have witnessed Sheridan engaging in group sex in exquisite detail. McCombe's accepted Sheridan's assertion that he was innocent of any personal involvement in the alleged hotel incident, but called on him over the sex club visits. McCombes has said that Sheridan accepted the foolishness of his behaviour, but remained adamant that the story would not go public. McCombes claims that he accepted these assurances, and decided that it would be in the party's best interest if the lid was firmly closed on the episode. (At this stage, only Sheridan, Baldassara and McCombes were privy to these private discussions, and McCombes alleges not to have been informed by Sheridan that he was accompanied by NOTW journalist Khan on his visit to Cupids': had he known, he would not have simply waited for the storm to merely blow over.) The NOTW published its "MARRIED MSP IS SPANKING SWINGER" story in October 2004. McCombes claims to have phoned Sheridan in the early hours of Sunday morning on reading the story (which was obviously a trail for a follow-up) in the first edition. McCombes, angry at Sheridan's alleged concealment of NOTW journalist Khan's involvement in proceedings, arranged to meet Sheridan at the scheduled SSP National Council in Edinburgh the following day. McCombes claims to have then met Sheridan in Baldassara's presence in Sheridan's office in Glasgow's City Chambers on Monday 1st November. The two men state that they urged Sheridan to go to the editor of the more sympathetic Scottish Mirror in order to take the sting out of the NOTW story. Baldassara and McCombes claim that Sheridan steadfastly asserted that he "could win this" and that he would "destroy" Khan. Moreover, if the story got out, he would be "totally destroyed" with no hope of coming back. (Although still not named, the "word" on Sheridan was already very much out on the streets. SSP party activist George McNeilage received what was considered to be reliable evidence circulating around the Glasgow underworld that Sheridan was a regular visitor of sex clubs.) SSP National Secretary, Allan Green, and the Co-Chairs --Carolyn Leckie and Catriona Grant --convened an emergency executive committee (EC) meeting for the 9th November 2004 to address the media storm heading their way. Having failed to attend an earlier meeting, Sheridan attended the EC meeting and, according to the SSP, admitted visiting Cupids on two occasions in 1996 and 2002 and asked for support but insisted that he would deal with events "in his own way" (denying everything), and that he would instigate legal proceedings against the newspaper on the basis that they "could not prove" their claims. Sheridan, who had to leave the meeting early, was not around to see EC members and non-EC regional organiser vote unanimously asking him to step down. It is precisely at this point that there is a major parting of the ways between Sheridan and his supporters and the rest of the SSP, with separate pro-Sheridan "SSP Majority" and anti-Sheridan "United Left" factions. Sheridan has argued throughout that he was invited to step down because he wanted to take on the NOTW over a false allegation. The SSP, for its part, claims that it was not prepared to back a libel action to prove what it considered to be a blatant fiction on Sheridan's part. The party had instead requested that he deny the allegations and pursue his grievances against the newspaper through public and political channels rather than through the courts. (Writing in an SSP Summer Bulletin
prepared directly after Sheridan's court victory, SSP National
Policy and Press Coordinator Alan McCombes observed that although
Sheridan had in fact portrayed his court battle as a "heroic
political stand against the Murdoch empire", he was in fact
offered a column by the Scottish Sun newspaper just weeks after
being sworn into the Scottish Parliament in 1999. According to
McCombes, Sheridan argued in private discussions within the party
that accepting the offer would allow the ideas of socialism to
be taken to a mass tabloid readership: so much for the evil empire
which had crushed the British printing trade unions with their
move to modern printing presses in Wapping, London, in the mid-1980s.
Sheridan would in fact go on to write for the Scottish Daily
Record, part of the Trinity Mirror Group; an opportunistic move
by the popular daily to get one over its News International owned
rival.) On Sunday 3 September, Sheridan announced plans, along with fellow SSP MSP Rosemary Byrne, to form a breakaway party, Solidarity--Scotland's Socialist Movement. In an SSP Executive Statement issued as a response to what many in the party felt to be a further development of Sheridan's great conceit, the party stated that:
Savouring the David versus Goliath nature of his victory against News International, Sheridan compared his own unexpected court success with that of lowly Scottish football club Gretna's achievement in reaching European club football for the first time in its history, claiming on the court steps after the landmark verdict that "what we have done in the last five weeks is the equivalent of Gretna taking on Real Madrid in the Bernabeu and beating them on penalties." Gretna went on to lose heavily in the first leg of their first European adventure before securing a face-saving but ultimately worthless draw in the second leg. Only time will tell whether Sheridan has won the battle or lost the war. He certainly seems to have lost the support of the party he helped create. Even the Scottish Daily Record, which carried a number of Sheridan favourable exclusive interviews after the trial, was moved to note on 5 August that "Although he won the case, it is not necessarily assumed every shred of evidence given against him was false." Despite Sheridan's unexpected court victory, questions as to why an SSP branch motion calling for libel trial evidence to be destroyed was circulated from his parliamentary email account remain unanswered. Above and beyond this, he remains beset by allegations of sexually predatory behaviour towards young female members going back to his Scottish Militant days which are also continue to do the rounds. Michael Jones, Counsel for the NOTW, noted that "History is littered with the political corpses of great men who have been brought down by their own recklessness." It remains to be seen whether Sheridan belongs to their number or he is, as he has insisted all along, the unwitting victim of a conspiracy borne of vicious party in-fighting and a salacious tabloid not known for its love of left-wing political firebrands. "The allegations in the course of this case have been as numerous as grains of sand in the Sahara Desert. But evidence, but real tangible, substantial evidence, has been conspicuous by its absence" he claimed. Man of integrity or pillar of salt? The jury remains firmly out. William MacDougall can be reached at: willmacdougall@netscape.net
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from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann  Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair          Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.  The Occupation by Patrick Cockburn                       |
