Douglas Caddy

The link that I posted is from the magazine's article that is being prominently displayed on the NY Times website today. The NY Times is one of the most influential publications in the world. One cannot ignore what it is publishing even if one disagrees with its content.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/magazine/joe-kennedy-iii.html?_r=1&hp

Lew Rockwell posted this on his website today, September 11, 2012: http://lewrockwell.c.../north1200.html

LEW ROCKWELL & GARY NORTH: STOP THE SMEAR ON OBAMAS’ LAW LICENSES By Douglas Caddy Attorney in Houston, Texas I find it appalling that two of the most respected leaders of the Libertarian and Austrian School of Economics movement continue unabated in their internet smear of Barack and Michelle Obama by erroneously claiming that they lost their licenses to practice law in Illinois. It is ludicrous to assert that the President of the United States lost his license to practice law “to avoid disciplinary action and the threat of disbarment.” This is equally true when the charge is made against the First Lady. Both Lew Rockwell and Gary North are extremely intelligent men and their writings and websites consistently contain valuable and sometimes vital information on important topics. How they have gotten themselves involved in spreading this vicious false charge about the Obamas is something I cannot fathom. In the original North article published by Rockwell titled “Left-wing Lawyer Who Founded the Modern Buckley-Based Conservative Movement Defends Obama” on September 6, 2012, North claimed that “the Obamas did what we never hear of any lawyer doing, except when threatened with disbarment: they surrendered their lawyer guild licenses.” (The so-called “left-wing” lawyer cited is me although I dispute the description.) In the latest North article published by Rockwell titled “Lost Law Licenses: Presidents Obama, Clinton, and Nixon” on September 8, 2012, North now claims, “My points in all this are simple with respect to the Obamas’ licenses to practice law: (1) Michelle Obama went inactive in 1994, despite a Harvard Law Degree, which is very strange, unless she was doing so to avoid a hearing on something: (2) her husband “retired” in January 2008. I am not saying that they were ever formally charged with misconduct. I am saying that the most plausible reason for their having abandoned their licenses was to avoid disciplinary action and the threat of disbarment.” Links to these two articles by North published by Rockwell can be found at the end of this writing. North first leveled his attack on the Obamas and their allegedly lost licenses in an article on September 4, 2012, on his subscription website, www.garynorth.com. At that time he stated, “The key to understanding Obama is not Marxism. The key is that he and his wife both lost their licenses to practice law in Illinois.” That same day I sent him an email disputing his assertion. I followed up the next day by sending him another email that contained the following links that proved his assertion was false and amounted to a smear: http://factcheck.org/2012/06/the-obamas-law-licenses/ http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/lawlicenses.asp North emailed me back the following day, September 6: “The summations are over. “The jury is now out. “No more new evidence. “That’s how it works in the court of public opinion, too.” But once again North has erred. The issue of the Obamas’ law licenses will not be decided in the court of public opinion because the Supreme Court of Illinois has already declared that neither Barack nor Michelle lost their law license. As disclosed in a report that can be found at the above link for factcheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center: “Q: Did Barack and Michelle Obama “surrender” their law licenses to avoid ethics charges? “A: No. A court official confirms that no public disciplinary proceeding has ever been brought against either of them, contrary to a false Internet rumor. By voluntarily inactivating their licenses, they avoid a requirement to take continuing education classes and pay hundreds of dollars in annual fees. Both could practice law again if they chose to do so.” The factcheck report went on to state: “We briefly addressed rumors about the status of the Obamas’ law licenses back in January 2010 in an AskFactCheck titled “clueless ‘Columbo.’” But a steady stream of questions about them has continued to flow to our inbox ever since. “It is true that neither the President nor the first lady holds an active license to practice law. A search on the website of the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois shows that Barack Obama is listed as “voluntarily retired and not authorized to practice law,” and Michelle Obama is listed as “voluntarily inactive and not authorized to practice law.” “But it is not true that President Obama “surrendered his license back in 2008 to escape charges that he lied on his bar application,” or that Michelle Obama “ ‘voluntarily surrendered’ her law license in 1993 after a Federal Judge gave her the choice between surrendering her license or standing trial for Insurance fraud,’ as the chain email claims. “Lawyers who voluntarily change their registration status to inactive or retired “may not practice law based upon their Illinois license or hold themselves out as being so authorized,” according to the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois. But James Grogan, deputy administrator and chief counsel of the ARDC, said that the Obamas were “never subject to any public disciplinary proceedings.” [End of quote from factcheck.org. Click on the above factcheck.org link to read its complete and detailed report with citations.] So North erred a second time when he wrote in his September 8 article that “I am saying that the most plausible reason for their having abandoned their licenses was to avoid disciplinary action or the threat of public disbarment.” One wonders why in his September 8 article North cited the report from snopes.com but failed to cite the report from factcheck.org, which contained the statement made by the spokesman of the Illinois Supreme Court. Was it omitted because the Supreme Court’s record clearly shows his charge against the Obamas is false? North’s attitude on this issue is best summed up by himself when he wrote in his latest article that “Obama’s supporters –several of them lawyers – have sent me emails crying “foul.’ I don’t much care. This is not a court of law. This is a court of public opinion.” Thus, he is saying that the American people should disregard what the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois has declared on the question of the Obamas’ law licenses and should instead believe the false rumor put out by him. This approach represents a total divorce from reality and is an irresponsible act of fantasy. It is akin to saying “don’t confuse me with the truth or the facts. I shall believe what I choose to believe and you should not question what I say the truth is.” Persons who hold professional licenses, such as attorneys and real estate brokers, will immediately recognize that what the Obamas did with their law licenses was normal and proper procedure. North fails to understand how the real world works today for persons who hold professional licenses and who act in good faith. The law teaches that no one can know with certainty what another person is thinking. Thus, we cannot know why Rockwell and North, intellectual giants in their own ways and universally recognized as among the most articulate and ardent defenders of individual liberty, decided to promote this smear of the Obamas. By doing so they belittle their statures. They owe their readers and the rank-and-file members of the Libertarian and Austrian School of Economics who respect their well-deserved reputations for integrity and seekers of truth to set the record straight and to do so promptly. Links to additional information: http://lewrockwell.com/north/north1195.html http://lewrockwell.com/north/north1197.html http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=19477

GARY NORTH IS WRONG WHEN HE CHARGES BOTH OBAMAS LOST THEIR ILLINOIS LAW LICENSES By Douglas Caddy Lewrockwell.com carries an article on September 6, 2012, titled “Infamous Lawyer Defends Barack-Michelle-License Scam. Gary North Swats Him Down” When the reader clicks on the article that which comes up is titled, “Left-Wing Lawyer Who Founded the Modern Buckley-Based Conservative Movement Defends Obama.” http://lewrockwell.com/north/north1195.html I confess that I am the lawyer involved although I do not consider myself left-wing or infamous. I do consider myself to be a liberal these days as the conservatism that I embraced in the 1950’s and 1960’s when I helped found Youth for Goldwater and Young Americans for Freedom is now reflected in the modern day liberal movement. For example, U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner, ranked among the leading conservative jurists, recently said that, “There has been a real deterioration in conservative thinking. And that has to lead people to re-examine and modify their thinking. I’ve become less conservative since the Republican Party started becoming goofy.” As for being infamous, my biography appears with other infamous persons in Who’sWho in American Law, Who’sWho in America and Who’sWho in the World. I am a subscriber to Gary North’s daily writings that can be found at garynorth.com. I find many of his articles provide invaluable information, especially on monetary and financial subjects and practical how-to-do-it topics. I do not embrace the views he espouses on religion and so regularly skip over these. However, I have no hesitation in recommending his website and encourage others to subscribe to it. I rank garynorth.com, lewrockwell.com, and the educationforum.ipbhost.com among the best sources of information one can find on the Internet. I have stated a number of times on my Facebook page that I am not voting for either Obama or Romney or for anyone else. I am skipping the presidential line in November but am voting on the other ballot races. Where I recently disagreed with Gary North was his website article of September 5, 2012, titled “Obama’s Brand of Marxism” in which he stated, “The key to understanding Obama is not Marxism. The key is that he and his wife both lost their licenses to practice law in Illinois.” It is false to state the either Barack or Michelle Obama lost their license to practice law in Illinois. Here is the truth of the matter as disclosed by factcheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, and by the authoritative snopes.com: http://factcheck.org/2012/06/the-obamas-law-licenses/ http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/lawlicenses.asp So who should one believe on this issue: Gary North or the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois? Everyone is entitled to be wrong once in a while and I maintain that Gary North so erred when he wrote that both Obamas lost their licenses to practice law in Illinois.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=19461

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/sep/03/rebekah-brooke-magistrates-court

August 31, 2012 The New York Times After a Gunslinger Cuts Loose, Romney Aides Take Cover By MICHAEL BARBARO and JEREMY W. PETERS TAMPA, Fla. — Clint Eastwood’s rambling and off-color endorsement of Mitt Romney on Thursday seemed to startle and unsettle even the candidate’s own top aides, several of whom made a point of distancing themselves from the decision to put him onstage without a polished script. “Not me,” said an exasperated-looking senior adviser, when asked who was responsible for Mr. Eastwood’s speech. In late-night interviews, aides variously called the speech “strange” and “weird.” One described it as “theater of the absurd.” Finger-pointing quickly ensued, suggesting real displeasure and even confusion over the handling of Mr. Eastwood’s performance, which was kept secret until the last minute and offered an off-key message on the night that Mr. Romney accepted the Republican presidential nomination. A senior Republican involved in convention planning said that Mr. Eastwood’s appearance was cleared by at least two of Mr. Romney’s top advisers, Russ Schriefer and Stuart Stevens. This person said that there had been no rehearsal, to the surprise of the rest of the campaign team. But another adviser said that several top aides had reviewed talking points given to Mr. Eastwood, which the campaign had discussed with the actor as recently as a few hours before his appearance. Mr. Eastwood, however, delivered those points in a theatrical, and at times crass, way that caught Romney aides off guard, this person said. Mr. Eastwood even ignored warnings that he had exceeded his time. Mr. Stevens, in an interview, said he would not discuss internal decision making but described Mr. Eastwood’s remarks as improvised. “He spoke from the heart with a classic improv sketch which everyone at the convention loved,” Mr. Stevens said. He called it “an honor that a great American icon would come and talk about the failure of the current president and the promise of the future one.” Mr. Eastwood delivered one of the more unusual moments in Republican convention history — a speech in which he pretended to have a sarcasm-filled conversation with President Obama sitting by his side in an empty chair. Initially, there were no plans for Mr. Eastwood to take a chair onstage as a prop. But at the last minute, the actor asked the production staff backstage if he could use one, but did not explain why. “The prop person probably thought he was going to sit in it,” a senior aide said. “Mr. President, how do you handle promises that you made when you were running for election?” the onetime Dirty Harry said, mumbling to a befuddled crowd of thousands in the convention hall and millions of television viewers. As thousands of “OMG!” tweets started flying, Mr. Eastwood, 82, asked the invisible Mr. Obama why he had not closed the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. “What do you mean, shut up?” he said, continuing to talk to his imaginary companion. A moment later, he stopped again, saying, “What do you want me to tell Mr. Romney?” “I can’t tell him that. He can’t do that to himself,” Mr. Eastwood said. “You’re getting as bad as Biden.” Leonard Hirshan, Mr. Eastwood’s manager, said the actor was traveling and would not be available for interviews until he started promotional work shortly for his next film, “Trouble With the Curve,” which is set for release by Warner Brothers on Sept. 21. Mr. Hirshan said he had heard a chorus of response since the speech, divided evenly between those supportive and critical. “The more I look at it, the more I appreciate what he did,” said Mr. Hirshan, who added that neither he nor others in Mr. Eastwood’s professional entourage, as far as he knew, were consulted in advance. “He does these things for himself,” said Mr. Hirshan, who spoke by telephone on Friday morning. “It’s his private life. He believes in what he’s doing.” The networks began their hour of convention coverage at 10 p.m. Eastern time, which meant that Mr. Eastwood was the first act of the night for their viewers. He was scheduled to speak for about five minutes but stayed onstage much longer, throwing off the schedule for Mr. Romney, a stickler against tardiness. As Mr. Eastwood ran long, convention producers activated a red light on the camera stand opposite the stage, a signal to nudge speakers to wrap up their remarks. Despite the fuss that the speech created, the campaign insisted that Mr. Romney enjoyed it. “I was backstage with him and he was laughing,” Mr. Stevens said. Aides said Mr. Eastwood does not like teleprompters and was trusted to deliver an on-message endorsement. “He made a last-minute decision to ad-lib, and I don’t think people knew,” said Ari Fleischer, a former adviser to George W. Bush, who said he had spoken with people involved in planning the convention. He suggested that second-guessing of the Romney campaign’s convention presentation was “just the nature of the beast.” Two aides said that Mr. Eastwood had been booked weeks ago and that the expectation was that he would deliver a more standard endorsement, as he did earlier this year in Sun Valley, Idaho. After that endorsement, Mr. Romney himself asked Mr. Eastwood to come to the convention, one of these people said. Advisers were quick to point out that Mr. Eastwood mentioned all the points they had agreed upon, including an unemployment figure, but the aides had expected him to address the issues in a more straightforward manner. As they hopped from party to party late Thursday and early Friday, celebrating the end of the Republican convention, Romney advisers tried gamely to find an upside. Several said that the Eastwood appearance offered a moment of improvisation in a convention that was otherwise surprise-free. Michael D. Shear contributed reporting from Tampa, and Michael Cieply from Los Angeles. -------------------------------------------

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/showtracker/la-et-st-critics-notebook-republican-national-convention-20120831,0,7934066.story One Democrat is quoted as saying that Eastwood's pathetic speech at the convention "made my day."

Phone Hacking: Tom Crone, former News of the World legal manager is arrested Tom Crone, the former legal manager of the News of the World has been arrested by police investigating the phone hacking scandal. By Martin Evans, Crime Correspondent The Telegraph 12:54PM BST 30 Aug 2012 The 60-year-old was detained at 6.45 this morning when officers attended his home in South West London. He was arrested on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications and was taken to a local police station for questioning. Sources said Mr Crone’s arrest followed information obtained by the police via the company’s Management and Standards Committee, set up in the wake of the phone hacking scandal. Mr Crone spent more than 25-years in News International’s legal department, having previously worked for the Mirror Group. He become the legal manager of the company, but his main focus was concentrated on steering the News of the World out of legal difficulty. Mr Crone left the company last July in the wake of the closure of the News of the World following the Milly Dowler hacking revelations. In 2009 Mr Crone accompanied the newspaper’s then editor, Colin Myler, to the culture media and sport select committee, where he maintained the line that phone hacking was believed to have gone no further than a single “rogue reporter”. He and Mr Myler later contradicted James Murdoch’s evidence to the committee insisting that they had informed him there was evidence that the scandal was much wider spread. When Rupert Murdoch appeared before the Leveson Inquiry into press standards earlier this year, he appeared to implicate Mr Crone in cover up at the company, claiming a "clever lawyer and drinking pal of the journalists" had prevented employees from blowing the whistle, while shielding executives from the truth. Mr Crone later issued a statement rebutting the allegations. He said: "Since Rupert Murdoch’s evidence today about a lawyer who had been on the News of the World for many years can only refer to me, I am issuing the following statement. “His assertion that I “took charge of a cover-up” in relation to phone-hacking is a shameful lie. The same applies to his assertions that I misinformed senior executives about what was going on and that I forbade people from reporting to Rebekah Brooks or to James Murdoch. “It is perhaps no coincidence that the two people he has identified in relation to his cover-up allegations are the same two people who pointed out that his son’s evidence to the Parliamentary Select Committee last year was inaccurate. "The fact that Mr Murdoch’s attack on Colin Myler and myself may have been personal as well as being wholly wrong greatly demeans him.” A spokesman for Scotland Yard said: "Officers from Operation Weeting, the MPS inquiry into the hacking of telephone voicemail boxes, arrested a man in South West London this morning, Thursday 30 August. "The 60-year-old man was arrested at his home address at approximately 06.45 hrs this morning on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications contrary to Section 1 of the Criminal Law Act 1977. He is being interviewed at a South London police station."

Journalist arrested in UK computer hacking probe Posted: Aug 29, 2012 10:50 AM CDT Updated: Aug 29, 2012 11:35 AM CDT By Associated Press LONDON - British police investigating computer hacking and privacy offenses arrested a journalist Wednesday at his home. The 28-year-old man was being questioned at a London police station for alleged hacking related to the identification of an anonymous blogger in 2009. He is also suspected of perverting the course of justice, police said. Police did not identify the journalist by name, but the Press Association said he was Patrick Foster, a former reporter at The Times. The British news agency didn't cite a source when identifying Foster. The journalist was the 11th person arrested by detectives from Operation Tuleta, one of three parallel police investigations triggered by the phone-hacking scandal that has rocked Britain and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. media empire. More than 40 people have been arrested in the probes of media wrongdoing and corruption. Criminal charges have been brought against suspects such as Rebekah Brooks, the former chief of News Corp.'s British operations, and Andy Coulson, a former Murdoch tabloid editor and the former communications chief for Prime Minister David Cameron. Separately, police in Scotland said they detained and charged former News of the World journalist Bob Bird in Glasgow on Wednesday with attempting to pervert the course of justice during the 2006 defamation court case between the tabloid and former lawmaker Tommy Sheridan. Sheridan successfully sued the newspaper for defamation in 2006. Bird, 56, edited the Scottish edition of the now-closed tabloid when it ran allegations about Sheridan's private life. "I have always done my best to do the right thing throughout the 30, 40 years of my journalistic career and I will be denying the charge against me," he told reporters outside the police station after he was released later Wednesday. Read more: http://www.myfoxdc.com/story/19407264/journalist-arrested-in-uk-computer-hacking-probe?clienttype=printable#ixzz24zD4bCy5

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/29/correspondence-collusion-new-york-times-cia

August 25, 2012 Where the Mob Keeps Its Money By ROBERTO SAVIANO The New York Times Rome THE global financial crisis has been a blessing for organized crime. A series of recent scandals have exposed the connection between some of the biggest global banks and the seamy underworld of mobsters, smugglers, drug traffickers and arms dealers. American banks have profited from money laundering by Latin American drug cartels, while the European debt crisis has strengthened the grip of the loan sharks and speculators who control the vast underground economies in countries like Spain and Greece. Mutually beneficial relationships between bankers and gangsters aren’t new, but what’s remarkable is their reach at the highest levels of global finance. In 2010, Wachovia admitted that it had essentially helped finance the murderous drug war in Mexico by failing to identify and stop illicit transactions. The bank, which was acquired by Wells Fargo during the financial crisis, agreed to pay $160 million in fines and penalties for tolerating the laundering, which occurred between 2004 and 2007. Last month, Senate investigators found that HSBC had for a decade improperly facilitated transactions by Mexican drug traffickers, Saudi financiers with ties to Al Qaeda and Iranian bankers trying to circumvent United States sanctions. The bank set aside $700 million to cover fines, settlements and other expenses related to the inquiry, and its chief of compliance resigned. ABN Amro, Barclays, Credit Suisse, Lloyds and ING have reached expensive settlements with regulators after admitting to executing the transactions of clients in disreputable countries like Cuba, Iran, Libya, Myanmar and Sudan. Many of the illicit transactions preceded the 2008 crisis, but continuing turmoil in the banking industry created an opening for organized crime groups, enabling them to enrich themselves and grow in strength. In 2009, Antonio Maria Costa, an Italian economist who then led the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, told the British newspaper The Observer that “in many instances, the money from drugs was the only liquid investment capital” available to some banks at the height of the crisis. “Interbank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade and other illegal activities,” he said. “There were signs that some banks were rescued that way.” The United Nations estimated that $1.6 trillion was laundered globally in 2009, of which about $580 billion was related to drug trafficking and other forms of organized crime. A study last year by the Colombian economists Alejandro Gaviria and Daniel Mejía concluded that the vast majority of profits from drug trafficking in Colombia were reaped by criminal syndicates in rich countries and laundered by banks in global financial centers like New York and London. They found that bank secrecy and privacy laws in Western countries often impeded transparency and made it easier for criminals to launder their money. At a Congressional hearing in February, Jennifer Shasky Calvery, a Justice Department official in charge of monitoring money laundering, said that “banks in the U.S. are used to funnel massive amounts of illicit funds.” The laundering, she explained, typically occurs in three stages. First, illicit funds are directly deposited in banks or deposited after being smuggled out of the United States and then back in. Then comes “layering,” the process of separating criminal profits from their origin. Finally comes “integration,” the use of seemingly legitimate transactions to hide ill-gotten gains. Unfortunately, investigators too often focus on the cultivation, production and trafficking of narcotics while missing the bigger, more sophisticated financial activities of crime rings. Mob financing via banks has ebbed and flowed over the years. In the late 1970s and early 1980s organized crime, which had previously dealt mainly in cash, started working its way into the banking system. This led authorities in Europe and America to take measures to slow international money laundering, prompting a temporary return to cash. Then the flow reversed again, partly because of the fall of the Soviet Union and the ensuing Russian financial crisis. As early as the mid-1980s, the K.G.B., with help from the Russian mafia, had started hiding Communist Party assets abroad, as the journalist Robert I. Friedman has documented. Perhaps $600 billion had left Russia by the mid-1990s, contributing to the country’s impoverishment. Russian mafia leaders also took advantage of post-Soviet privatization to buy up state property. Then, in 1998, the ruble sharply depreciated, prompting a default on Russia’s public debt. Although the United States cracked down on terrorist financing after the 9/11 attacks, instability in the financial system, like the Argentine debt default in 2001, continued to give banks an incentive to look the other way. My reporting on the ’Ndrangheta, the powerful criminal syndicate based in Southern Italy, found that much of the money laundering over the last decade simply shifted from America to Europe. The European debt crisis, now three years old, has further emboldened the mob. IN Greece, as conventional bank lending has gotten tighter, more and more Greeks are relying on usurers. A variety of sources told Reuters last year that the illegal lending business in Greece involved between 5 billion and 10 billion euros each year. The loan-shark business has perhaps quadrupled since 2009 — some of the extortionists charge annualized interest rates starting at 60 percent. In Thessaloniki, the second largest city, the police broke up a criminal ring that was lending money at a weekly interest rate of 5 percent to 15 percent, with punishments for whoever didn’t pay up. According to the Greek Ministry of Finance, much of the illegal loan activity in Greece is connected to gangs from the Balkans and Eastern Europe. Organized crime also dominates the black market for oil in Greece; perhaps three billion euros (about $3.8 billion) a year of contraband fuel courses through the country. Shipping is Greece’s premier industry, and the price of shipping fuel is set by law at one-third the price of fuel for cars and homes. So traffickers turn shipping fuel into more expensive home and automobile fuel. It is estimated that 20 percent of the gasoline sold in Greece is from the black market. The trafficking not only results in higher prices but also deprives the government of desperately needed revenue. Greece’s political system is a “parliamentary mafiocracy,” the political expert Panos Kostakos told the energy news agency Oilprice.com earlier this year. “Greece has one of the largest black markets in Europe and the highest corruption levels in Europe,” he said. “There is a sovereign debt that does not mirror the real wealth of the average Greek family. What more evidence do we need to conclude that this is Greek mafia?” Spain’s crisis, like Greece’s, was prefaced by years of mafia power and money and a lack of effectively enforced rules and regulations. At the moment, Spain is colonized by local criminal groups as well as by Italian, Russian, Colombian and Mexican organizations. Historically, Spain has been a shelter for Italian fugitives, although the situation changed with the enforcement of pan-European arrest warrants. Spanish anti-mafia laws have also improved, but the country continues to offer laundering opportunities, which only increased with the current economic crisis in Europe. The Spanish real estate boom, which lasted from 1997 to 2007, was a godsend for criminal organizations, which invested dirty money in Iberian construction. Then, when home sales slowed and the building bubble burst, the mafia profited again — by buying up at bargain prices houses that people put on the market or that otherwise would have gone unsold. In 2006, Spain’s central bank investigated the vast number of 500-euro bills in circulation. Criminal organizations favor these notes because they don’t take up much room; a 45-centimeter safe deposit box can fit up to 10 million euros. In 2010, British currency exchange offices stopped accepting 500-euro bills after discovering that 90 percent of transactions involving them were connected to criminal activities. Yet 500-euro bills still account for 70 percent of the value of all bank notes in Spain. And in Italy, the mafia can still count on 65 billion euros (about $82 billion) in liquid capital every year. Criminal organizations siphon 100 billion euros from the legal economy, a sum equivalent to 7 percent of G.D.P. — money that ends up in the hands of Mafiosi instead of sustaining the government or law-abiding Italians. “We will defeat the mafia by 2013,” Silvio Berlusconi, then the prime minister, declared in 2009. It was one of many unfulfilled promises. Mario Monti, the current prime minister, has stated that Italy’s dire financial situation is above all a consequence of tax evasion. He has said that even more drastic measures are needed to combat the underground economy generated by the mafia, which is destroying the legal economy. Today’s mafias are global organizations. They operate everywhere, speak multiple languages, form overseas alliances and joint ventures, and make investments just like any other multinational company. You can’t take on multinational giants locally. Every country needs to do its part, for no country is immune. Organized crime must be hit in its economic engine, which all too often remains untouched because liquid capital is harder to trace and because in times of crisis, many, including the world’s major banks, find it too tempting to resist. Roberto Saviano is a journalist and the author of the book “Gomorrah.” He has lived under police protection since 2006, when he received death threats from organized crime figures in Italy. This essay was translated by Virginia Jewiss from the Italian.

Angry Murdoch used Harry photos to defy Leveson The owner of 'The Sun' intervened personally to run the pictures of the naked prince By Jane Merrick, Paul Bignell The Independent Sunday, 26 August 2012 An angry Rupert Murdoch ordered The Sun to publish pictures of a naked Prince Harry against the wishes of the Royal Family because he wanted to send a warning shot to Lord Justice Leveson, sources said yesterday. The owner of the red-top phoned the News International chief executive Tom Mockridge from New York on Thursday amid suggestions that The Sun and other papers did not carry the photos for fear of recriminations in the Leveson report. When the images emerged on Wednesday, St James's Palace asked the Press Complaints Commission to tell editors it did not want them published, and all British papers abided by the request on Thursday. But on Friday, The Sun carried a picture of a naked Prince Harry, taken during a game of strip pool in his hotel suite in Las Vegas last weekend, raising questions over why the paper changed its stance. News International has refused to comment on speculation that Mr Murdoch intervened. But according to a well-placed source, Mr Murdoch told Mr Mockridge in his transatlantic phone call on Thursday: "There is a principle here. I know this is about Leveson but this is humiliating. We can't carry on like this. We should run them, do it and say to Leveson, we are doing it for press freedom." The Sun's decision to publish the pictures sparked both criticism and praise from MPs, peers and commentators, as well as more than 850 complaints from members of the public to the PCC. St James's Palace so far has not lodged a formal complaint of breach of privacy on behalf of Prince Harry with the PCC. It has also triggered a debate about what constitutes the public interest, given that Prince Harry, an officer in the Army, was in his hotel room, despite partying with several strangers. Lord Justice Leveson is preparing to publish his report into the practices and ethics of the press this autumn, and is expected to recommend tougher independent regulation. There are fears that The Sun's actions may force Lord Justice Leveson to come down harder on newspapers. Neil Wallis, a former executive editor of the News of the World, said: "This was a decision taken by Rupert. Rupert cares passionately about newspapers. He thinks this stuff is important. This is the only good thing that has happened at News International for a year. Once they knew they were going to do it, there was just a magnificent morale boost. They have stood up and looked the rest of the media in the eye, Parliament in the eye, and looked Leveson in the eye. Rupert has done an enormous amount for the morale of his own newspaper. And also, I know, journalists from other companies, although they can't publicly say so." But Max Mosley, who successfully sued the News of the World for breach of privacy, told The Independent on Sunday that publishing the Prince Harry photographs was "100 per cent not in the public interest. It is theft. It's his privacy … and they've stolen something from him. If they were an honest newspaper, they wouldn't have published them". A spokesman for the Leveson inquiry declined to comment. A spokeswoman for News International said: "We haven't commented at all on who was involved or not involved in the decision process." According to reports, Prince Harry, 27, the third in line to the throne, was being summoned for "crisis talks" with his father, Prince Charles. There is also pressure on St James's Palace and Buckingham Palace to review royal protection procedures. Harriet Harman, Labour deputy leader and the shadow Culture Secretary, cast doubt yesterday on Elisabeth Murdoch's MacTaggart lecture last week in which she distanced herself from her father and brother James. Speaking at the Edinburgh International Television Festival, Ms Harman said: "It was exquisite torture for me that you wait 17 years for a woman to give the MacTaggart lecture and it's a Murdoch. It's a bit like waiting for a woman to be Prime Minister and finding it's Margaret Thatcher. Of course it was important for her to be saying profit should be the servant, not the master, but we didn't hear how that was going to happen." Ms Harman criticised the "dysfunctionality" in the Murdoch empire and added: "What the Murdochs mean for many people is concentration of power or abuse of power."

I pushed for my brother to be demoted, says Elisabeth Murdoch Admission comes after she criticised approach to phone-hacking scandal in keynote speech IBy an Burrell The Independent Saturday, 25 August 2012 Elisabeth Murdoch has admitted that she lobbied for her brother James to be demoted at the family's News Corp media empire over his handling of the phone-hacking scandal, a day after she publicly criticised him over his approach to business. Ms Murdoch told delegates at the Edinburgh International Television Festival that she had lobbied "within closed doors" for James to stand down from his role as executive chairman of News International. She agreed that she had been "quite forceful" in insisting that James should "take a step back". She also lobbied for News International's chief executive Rebekah Brooks to resign. "She had to resign," she said yesterday. Ms Brooks, who faces criminal charges over phone hacking, is a friend of Ms Murdoch. The latest comments follow Ms Murdoch's criticisms of her brother during her James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture on Thursday night. That attack was widely seen as an attempt to distance herself from James and to position herself for a bigger role within News Corp, where James is deputy chief operating officer and had until recently been widely seen as the likely heir to their 81-year-old father, Rupert. James Murdoch delivered the MacTaggart Lecture in 2009 and used the occasion to attack the ambition of the BBC and to claim that profit was the only guarantor of independence in business. His sister rebutted the theory – saying it was a "recipe for disaster" – and went out of her way to praise the leadership of the BBC and express support for its licence fee. Although she described James as an "incredibly able" media executive yesterday, the fact she pushed for him to stand down gives an indication of her position within the family and News Corp. Since last year, Ms Murdoch has returned to the family business following News Corp's £415m acquisition of Shine Group, the portfolio of independent television production companies she has built up since 2001. But in Edinburgh she rejected the notion that she wanted to run News Corp. "I really harbour no ambition for the top job," she said. Referring to her comments on News Corp in her speech, she said it had been a "nightmare year" for the company and she felt a responsibility to "stand and up be counted" by giving her views. Ms Murdoch, 44, also used her MacTaggart speech to express her admiration for her father, who delivered the same lecture a generation earlier. "My dad had the vision, the will and the sense of purpose to challenge the old world order on behalf of 'the people'," she said. Yesterday she spoke of her pain at watching the elderly media mogul give evidence to MPs on his company's involvement in phone hacking "As a daughter it was absolutely heartbreaking," she said. "He's my dad. I love him. " Ms Murdoch said her father was being genuine when he described the parliamentary questioning as the most humbling day of his life. "I know he absolutely meant it," she said.

Elisabeth Murdoch takes aim at brother on media morality By Paul Sandle August 23, 2012 EDINBURGH (Reuters) - Elisabeth Murdoch urged the media industry on Thursday to embrace morality and reject her brother James's mantra of profit at all costs, in a speech seen as an attempt to distance herself from the scandal that has tarnished the family name. Addressing television executives, she said profit without purpose was a recipe for disaster and the phone hacking scandal at the News of the World tabloid - which has badly hurt her father Rupert Murdoch's News Corp empire - showed the need for a rigorous set of values. The comments from a woman who has powerful friends in the British establishment and the support of her PR husband Matthew Freud, are likely to be examined for whether she could one day run News Corp instead of her brothers whose chances have faded. "News (Corp) is a company that is currently asking itself some very significant and difficult questions about how some behaviors fell so far short of its values," she said in the annual television industry MacTaggart lecture. "Personally I believe one of the biggest lessons of the past year has been the need for any organization to discuss, affirm and institutionalize a rigorous set of values based on an explicit statement of purpose," she said in remarks which drew applause. Elisabeth Murdoch - a successful television producer who was overlooked for senior jobs at News Corp that went first to her brother Lachlan and then James - said a lack of morality could become a dangerous own goal for capitalism. Rupert Murdoch last year closed the News of the World, which was owned by a News Corp unit, amid public anger that its journalists had hacked into the voicemails of people from celebrities to victims of crime. A number of former executives have appeared in court over the case and the government set up a judicial inquiry into press standards. "There's only one way to look at this," Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff told Reuters. "This is part of a strategic repositioning of Liz Murdoch within the media world, with the business world and within the family." The often humorous lecture delivered at the annual Edinburgh Television Festival came three years after James Murdoch used the same platform to confront a largely hostile audience with his vision for the industry. Elisabeth, 44, and 39-year-old James had been very close, according to sources close to the family, but their relationship became strained by the hacking affair. "Writing a MacTaggart (lecture) has been quite a welcome distraction from some of the other nightmares much closer to home. Yes, you have met some of my family before," she said to laughter, in a rare speech for the founder of the successful television production company Shine. Stewart Purvis, the former head of broadcast news provider ITN, said on Twitter that the speech should be called "Why I am not my father or my brother". Her highly personal speech appeared designed to win over any doubters, with references to childhood conversations at the breakfast table with dad to her continuing affection for the much-loved British playwright Alan Bennett. She even lavished praise on the state-owned BBC, previously the butt of jokes by her brother but which also regularly airs programs made by her Shine company. RECIPE FOR DISASTER Referring to her younger brother James's 2009 speech, Elisabeth said his assertion that the only reliable, durable and perpetual guarantor of media independence was profit had fallen short of the mark. "The reason his statement sat so uncomfortably is that profit without purpose is a recipe for disaster," she said. "Profit must be our servant, not our master," she added. "It's increasingly apparent that the absence of purpose - or of a moral language — within government, media or business, could become one of the most dangerous own goals for capitalism and for freedom." British tabloids have been accused of producing ever-more salacious stories before the scandal broke in an effort to maintain circulation. Rupert Murdoch admitted that the scandal had left a serious blot on his reputation. The sharp change in tone, with its emphasis on personal responsibility, underlined how much had changed since James Murdoch used his own MacTaggart lecture to accuse the BBC of having "chilling" ambitions. That speech, delivered in his role as chairman of the pay-TV group BSkyB and head of News Corp in Europe and Asia, consolidated James's position as heir apparent to his father's role. It also echoed Rupert Murdoch's own 1989 speech that broadcasting was a business that needed competition. Since then, both men have been chastened by the fallout of the phone hacking affair. At the height of the scandal News Corp had to halt a $12 billion bid to buy the rest of BSkyB it did not already own, angering investors and sowing doubts as to whether James had what it took to run the $55 billion empire. News Corp announced in June that it was splitting off its newspaper business. While brother Lachlan was often pictured with the family last year, Elisabeth stayed in the background. Lachlan stood down from his role as News Corp deputy chief operating officer in 2005 after clashing with senior executives. Now James Murdoch's fall from grace has turned the spotlight onto Elisabeth in the long-running debate over who will one day replace their 81-year-old father at the head of the company. "I think she was trying to put her mark on where she had come from and where she fits in," Enders analyst Toby Syfret told Reuters after emerging from the speech. "She made it clear where she didn't agree with James, and she made clear the things about her father that she admired. "From a political level it was quite interesting." Stressing her links to her father and the vision he espoused when he built his company over 60 years ago, she spoke in glowing terms of his 1989 speech. "A quarter of a century later, I am still wholly inspired by those words and they are still deeply relevant today," she said. "I understood that we were in pursuit of a greater good - a belief in better." (Writing by Kate Holton; editing by David Stamp)

August 22, 2012 U.N. Visit Will Set Back a Push to Isolate Iran By RICK GLADSTONE The New York Times Efforts led by the United States and Israel to isolate Iran suffered a setback on Wednesday when the United Nations announced that Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general, would join officials from 120 countries in Tehran next week for a summit meeting that Iran has trumpeted as a vindication of its defiance and enduring importance in world affairs. Mr. Ban’s decision to attend the meeting of the Nonaligned Movement, announced by his spokesman, Martin Nesirky, came despite objections from both the Americans and Israelis, including a phone call from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. It was announced a few days after the new president of Egypt, a country that has long been estranged from Iran, said he would attend the summit meeting as well, a decision that had already unsettled the Israelis. Taken together, the moves reinforced Iran’s contention that a reordering of powers is under way in the Middle East, where Western influence is waning, and that the American-Israeli campaign to vilify Iran as a rogue state that exports terrorism and secretly covets nuclear weapons is not resonating in much of the world. The meeting of the Nonaligned Movement, a group formed during the cold war, includes a number of other countries that the United States has sought to marginalize, among them North Korea and Sudan, whose president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, is wanted under a war crimes indictment by the International Criminal Court. Although Iran’s hosting of the meeting is strictly a coincidence of history — under a rotating system, Iran presides over the group through 2014 — Iranian leaders have portrayed it as a privilege that repudiates the American narrative. “The extraordinary effort that the Iranian leaders have put into the summit is intended to showcase Iran’s global role and offer concrete evidence that the U.S. policy of isolating Iran has failed,” said Farideh Farhi, an independent Iranian scholar at the University of Hawaii. “A case is being made that it is not the ‘global community’ that has problems with the Islamic republic, as repeatedly asserted by U.S. officials, but merely a U.S.-led-and-pressured coalition of countries,” she said. “And ironically the Obama administration is conceding the point by trying to pressure various leaders from attending the meeting.” Mr. Ban’s decision to participate, which might have gone nearly unnoticed in other years, was particularly fraught now because of the tensions surrounding the host country. Iran has defied United Nations Security Council resolutions to halt its uranium enrichment and has strongly supported the Syrian government’s sharp repression of an armed uprising, a crackdown that Mr. Ban has repeatedly condemned. Mr. Ban has also castigated the anti-Semitic statements and calls for Israel’s destruction made recently by Iranian leaders, reminding them that the United Nations Charter prohibits one member from threatening the existence of another. But many diplomats and others said it would have been extraordinarily difficult for Mr. Ban not to go. The 120 countries that are in the Nonaligned Movement represent the biggest single voting bloc in the 193-member General Assembly at the United Nations. It is customary for the secretary general to attend the movement’s annual meetings regardless of political delicacies surrounding the host country. “A sizable chunk if not a majority of the world’s population are citizens of nonaligned nations,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “It’s not something the United Nations secretary general can easily dismiss.” Acknowledging that Mr. Ban has been under pressure not to attend, Mr. Nesirky, his spokesman, said Mr. Ban viewed the visit as a chance to raise the issues of Iran’s nuclear program, its support for Syria and its campaign against Israel directly with his hosts. “The secretary general is fully aware of the sensitivities of this visit,” Mr. Nesirky told reporters at the United Nations. “He’s heard the views of some of those who said he should not go. At the same time, the secretary general has responsibilities that he is determined to carry out.” Mr. Nesirky also said Mr. Ban expected to meet with senior Iranian leaders, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “It is certainly the secretary general’s expectation that he will have meaningful and fruitful discussions with the supreme leader,” Mr. Nesirky said. To boycott the invitation from Iran, Mr. Nesirky said, “would be a missed opportunity.” There was no immediate reaction to Mr. Ban’s decision from Israel. But according to Mr. Netanyahu’s office, he had telephoned Mr. Ban on Aug. 10 and told him that such a trip, even if well intentioned, would be a mistake. “Your visit will grant legitimacy to a regime that is the greatest threat to world peace and security,” Mr. Netanyahu was quoted as saying. Even before Mr. Ban made his decision known, the Israeli government was asserting that the sanctions effort against Iran was not working, a conclusion that was reinforced for the Israelis because of the decision to attend the summit meeting in Iran by President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt. “If you’re going there, if you’re paying homage to the leaders of Iran, what kind of diplomatic isolation is that?” Mark Regev, Mr. Netanyahu’s spokesman, said of Mr. Morsi’s decision. The reaction to Mr. Ban’s announcement was more muted from the Obama administration, which had engaged in a less public effort to dissuade him. Some administration officials sought to put the best face on the situation, urging Mr. Ban to exploit the moment to convey his unhappiness with Iran’s behavior. “We think that Iran is going to try to use the event for propaganda purposes and to try to cover up the extreme isolation Iran is feeling politically and economically,” said Tommy Vietor, the spokesman for the National Security Council. “That said, if people choose to participate, we believe they should take the opportunity of any meetings that they have with Iran’s leaders to press them to comply with their international obligations without further delay.” The American Jewish Committee, among a number of pro-Israel voices in the United States that had exhorted Mr. Ban not to visit Iran, called the decision “a grave mistake” in a statement posted on its Web site. “Tehran is not the place for the U.N. secretary general to visit, not at this time, not to meet with this Iranian regime,” David Harris, the group’s executive director, said in the statement. “We are stunned that Secretary General Ban Ki-moon would honor a regime that consistently ignores both him and the world body he heads in ways that threaten regional and global security.” Some said that Mr. Ban’s three-day visit, which begins next Wednesday, could also turn out badly for Iranian leaders, particularly if he raises issues in an unfiltered way to the Iranian public about the government’s human rights record. Others said that Mr. Ban could surprise critics by confronting or embarrassing Ayatollah Khamenei and his subordinates over their anti-Semitic statements. “The fact that he’s going is going to be viewed as a victory for Iran,” said Trita Parsi, the president of the National Iranian American Council, an advocacy group of Americans of Iranian descent. “But if pressure leads Ban Ki-moon to express harsh criticism of their statements on Israel, then it could be viewed as a victory for those who had not wanted him to go.” Jodi Rudoren contributed reporting from Jerusalem, and David E. Sanger from Washington.

Names of up to 600 victims of phone hacking to be revealed The new list is likely to cause fresh investor dissatisfaction with News International The Telegraph By Martin Hickman Wednesday, 22 August 2012 Hundreds of alleged phone-hacking victims are about to be named for the first time, substantially raising the pressure on Rupert Murdoch's newspaper empire. Alleged victims of voicemail interception, such as Wayne Rooney, Sir Paul McCartney and Sienna Miller, have so far emerged in dribs and drabs and the total stands at around 200. However, The Independent can disclose that within weeks prosecutors will reveal a list of up to 600 names in phone hacking criminal cases. The list is expected to reveal more well-known figures typical of the News of the World's alleged targets, such as actors, pop stars, politicians and murder victims. Media attention is likely to centre on whether any more Hollywood stars join Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie on the charge sheet. The move – the biggest single announcement of alleged targets of illegal newsgathering – is likely to generate a mass of embarrassing headlines and heighten investor dissatisfaction with the News of the World's owner, News International, and its American corporate parent, News Corp. News Corp is spinning off its publishing assets, including its remaining British newspapers – The Sunday Times, The Times and The Sun – in an attempt to assure investors. Detectives have already contacted the majority of "likely" victims, most of whom have come to public attention only when launching civil cases against the News of the World. Police are now in the process of contacting hundreds more people to inform them that their cases form part of a generic criminal charge against seven former NOTW staff: Andy Coulson (later David Cameron's Downing Street media chief), Rebekah Brooks, Stuart Kuttner, Greg Miskiw, Ian Edmondson, Neville Thurlbeck and James Weatherup. Once that process is finished, prosecutors (who may exclude victims who strongly object to being involved in a high-profile trial) will announce remaining names on the charge sheet. That means up to 400 people not previously known to be victims are expected to be identified at court hearings. All seven journalists are jointly accused of one count of conspiracy to intercept the voicemail messages of 600 individuals between 2000 and 2006. They are also charged with offences in relation to a varying number of a pool of 23 newsworthy individuals, including the film star Jude Law and former England football coach Sven Goran Eriksson. Private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, who does not face the generic charge, is accused of conspiring to hack the phones of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, former Fire Brigades Union leader Andy Gilchrist, TV chef Delia Smith and former Cabinet minister Charles Clarke. Brooks, her racehorse trainer husband Charlie Brooks and five others have been charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice relating to the police investigation and are due to attend Southwark Crown Court in relation to those charges on 26 September. All those charged who have so far spoken out to say they are innocent of all charges.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/08/21/the-south-gathers-in-tehran/

http://lewrockwell.com/miller/miller40.1.html

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp launches anti-corruption review Media group to review compliance with bribery laws in several of its publishing arms, including News International in London By Josh Halliday guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 15 August 2012 12.38 EDT [To view Murdoch memo to staff, click on link below] http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/aug/15/rupert-murdoch-memo-news-corp-staff?intcmp=239 Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation has launched a review of anti-corruption controls in several of its publishing arms, including News International in London. Murdoch told News Corp staff in a memo on Wednesday that the company recently launched the probe as a "forward-looking review" to improve compliance with bribery laws. The media tycoon told staff that the anti-corruption review was "not based on any suspicion of wrongdoing by any particular business unit or its personnel". The memo described the review as focused on selected locations around the globe. One of these locations is London, where News International publishes the Sun, the Times and the Sunday Times. It also published the now-closed News of the World. It is understood that News International's broad internal anti-corruption review began officially in July last year, when Tom Mockridge replaced Rebekah Brooks as chief executive. The probe accelerated when Imogen Haddon took over as chief compliance officer at News International in March. News Corp also appointed two New York-based compliance officers to oversee company-wide procedures. Gerson Zweifach, ex-senior executive vice-president and general counsel, is News Corp chief compliance officer and Lisa Fleischman, former associate general counsel, is deputy compliance officer. The Metropolitan police has arrested 14 current or former Sun journalists as part of its ongoing investigation into inappropriate payments to police and public officials. Murdoch said in his memo to staff: "As you are all aware, our company has been under intense scrutiny in the United Kingdom. I assured parliament and the Leveson inquiry that we would move quickly and aggressively to redress wrongdoing, co-operate with law enforcement officials and strengthen our compliance and ethics programme company-wide. With the support of our board of directors, I am pleased to tell you that we have made progress on each of these important steps." He added: "We have already strengthened and expanded our anti-bribery training programmes. To ensure the effectiveness of our entire compliance and ethics programme, we have recently initiated a review of anti-corruption controls in selected locations around the globe. The purpose of this review is to test our current internal controls and identify ways in which we can enhance them. "Let me emphasise that the review is not based on any suspicion of wrongdoing by any particular business unit or its personnel. Rather, it is a forward-looking review based on our commitment to improve anti-corruption controls throughout the company." Murdoch said the strengthening of News Corp's compliance procedures will take time and resources, but added that the cost of non-compliance are far more serious.

The British Lawmaker Nipping at Tabloids’ Heels By AMY CHOZICK The New York Times August 10, 2012 LONDON SIX years ago, Rupert Murdoch’s British tabloid The Sun described Tom Watson, then a little-known 39-year-old member of Parliament, as part of a “plotting gang of weasels” who played “grubby politics at a time when soldiers are dying in Afghanistan.” Recently, Mr. Watson got some payback. For years he led the push to investigate the freewheeling tactics at British tabloids, most notably those belonging to Mr. Murdoch, as the scandal involving phone hacking unfolded. Last month prosecutors brought criminal charges against eight senior editors and reporters at News International, the British publishing arm of Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation. Since the accusations were first made public, Mr. Watson, a Labour politician who had himself been the subject of tabloid fodder, has emerged as a kind of Inspector Javert of the Murdochs. He served on the parliamentary committee on media ethics that repeatedly questioned Mr. Murdoch and his son James; traveled to Los Angeles to attend the company’s shareholder meeting where he leveled new charges, and he even recently published a book about the phone-hacking scandal, “Dial M For Murdoch.” It is hard to imagine even the most publicity-craving American official writing a similar book in the middle of Congressional hearings. And Mr. Watson has faced criticism for his ubiquity in the British news media and for telling James Murdoch, who formerly oversaw News Corporation’s British operations, during the hearing that he is “the first mafia boss in history who didn’t know he was running a criminal enterprise.” The criticisms have not deterred Mr. Watson. On a sunny afternoon in his office at Portcullis House in Westminster, the shades pulled tight, he said he expected that the phone hacking would prove to be the tip of the iceberg. “I’m certain we’ll see more evidence emerge of computer hacking,” Mr. Watson said in a far-ranging interview in May. Last month a Scotland Yard investigation did reveal that wrongdoing at Murdoch-owned British papers extended to computer hacking and payments to public officials. Mr. Watson, 45, is not the typical corporate gadfly. He indulges in the role-playing video game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in his free time and quotes Bob Dylan in describing News International’s mistakes. (“The ladder of the law has no top and no bottom,” he said in a May news conference.) Last year, Mr. Watson was named deputy chairman of the Labour Party, a position that coordinates the party’s campaigns. On his office wall at Parliament hangs an illustrated rendering of Mr. Watson dressed as Super Mario, royal blue overalls and all, and a framed copy of the final edition of the 168-year-old News of the World, the Murdoch tabloid closed in July 2011 after reports of widespread phone hacking emerged. “Thank You & Goodbye,” the headline read. Born in Sheffield and raised in Kidderminster in Britain’s West Midlands area, he grew up reading the left-wing tabloid Morning Star (founded in 1930 as the mouthpiece of Britain’s Communist Party) and middle-market Daily Express. He was first elected to Parliament in 2001, representing West Bromwich East, a central district that includes most of the town of West Bromwich and has one of the highest unemployment rates in Britain. IN 2006, Mr. Watson signed a letter calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Tony Blair, whom Mr. Murdoch still backed. The move, Mr. Watson said, prompted the ire of Rebekah Brooks (then Rebekah Wade), the onetime editor of both The Sun and News of the World who has now been charged with phone hacking and obstruction. He said the political editor at the Blair-friendly Sun warned him: “My editor will pursue you for the rest of your life. She will never forgive you for what you did to her Tony.” Ms. Brooks could not be reached for comment, and a News Corporation spokeswoman could not comment on the criminal investigation. In 2009 The Telegraph reported that Mr. Watson claimed the maximum government allowance on a set of dining room chairs for his London home. The purchase, which he had to defend with the parliamentary fees office, earned Mr. Watson a free pizza cutter from the department store Marks & Spencer, a detail not lost on the British media. He said he did not think much about phone hacking until 2009 when The Guardian published an article about how News of the World reporters regularly intercepted voice mail messages. Colin Myler, then the editor of The News of the World (and now of The New York Daily News), answered lawmakers’ questions about the accusations. “His body language was such that I thought there had to be more to it,” Mr. Watson said. “That’s when we really started to drill down deeper.” Around that time, News International put Mr. Watson and his family under surveillance. “We were put under unbearable pressure,” Mr. Watson said. He said the scrutiny put on his family by News International contributed to his divorce. “My wife and I are separated mainly because she’s not patient about News International in any way,” Mr. Watson said. In November, James Murdoch said he was subsequently made aware that the company had spied on Mr. Watson. “I apologize unreservedly for that,” he said in a parliamentary select committee hearing. “It is not something that I would condone. It is not something I had knowledge of, and it is not something that has a place in the way we operate.” In May, Mr. Watson, as part of Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, was one of six Labour and Liberal Democrat legislators who declared that the elder Murdoch was “not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company.” News Corporation called the report’s declaration “unjustified and highly partisan,” but Mr. Watson stands by the report’s language. With unexpected respect he called Mr. Murdoch “one of the great media innovators of the last half century,” but said that the scandal had exposed a “corporate culture that is shot to pieces.” (A News Corporation spokeswoman declined to comment for this article.) Mr. Watson’s new book, written with the journalist Martin Hickman, recounts the episodes that led to the closing of The News of the World. In the book he tells a story steeped in the language of class warfare and refers to himself in the third person, in both mundane and heroic terms. (“Watson crept out of bed and bought the papers.” “As Watson walked along the beach, he was in tears.”) HE said he did not see a conflict in writing a book about a corporate scandal while sitting on a committee investigating that scandal. Instead, he said he considered the book a public service. “It’s a complex story that was not told in the pages of British newspapers until very recently,” Mr. Watson said. He added: “And our select committees aren’t as powerful as Senate committees” in the United States. Mr. Watson said he expected the investigation into News Corporation would stretch on for at least two more years. The scandal, meanwhile, has helped raise Mr. Watson’s profile, a detail not lost on his opponents, who feel the crusade against Mr. Murdoch was motivated in part for political gain. Mr. Watson said it was not. But he did say that a murky area goes with the territory. “The good guys and the bad guys are all slightly flawed in this tragedy,” Mr. Watson said. The bells of Big Ben just outside his office struck five o’clock in the background. He added: “In some ways it’s so positively Shakespearean.”

News Corporation posts $1.6bn loss as phone-hacking legal fees stack up Losses include charges related to plan to split off publishing assets from more lucrative film and By Dominic Rushe in New York guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 8 August 2012 17.39 EDT News Corp said legal costs relating to the phone-hacking investigation had mounted to $224m. News Corporation made a loss of $1.6bn (£1.2bn) in the last quarter as it absorbed $2.8bn in charges related to a plan to spin off its ailing publishing businesses. The loss compared with a profit of $683m in the same period a year ago and came as revenues dipped 6.7% to $8.4bn, hit by a slide in audiences for TV shows including American Idol and disappointment at the box office for its Hollywood studio. The results were below analysts' expectations and the company's shares fell in after-hours trading. The fourth-quarter loss was linked "most significantly" to poor performances at News Corp's Australian publishing assets, the company said. News Corp announced plans last month to split off its publishing assets including the Wall Street Journal, the Times and the Sun in the UK, and its Australian newspapers from the more lucrative film and television assets including Fox Broadcasting, the Twentieth Century Fox studios and its stake in BSkyB. The move comes in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal that has led to a sprawling criminal investigation in Britain and has triggered an investigation in the US under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. News Corp said legal costs relating to the investigation had risen to $224m for the 2012 fiscal year. On a conference call with analysts, News Corp president Chase Carey said the split of the company was going as planned and "all about bringing focus and alignment to our business". The results painted a grim picture for the publishing business, which reported annual operating income of $597m, down from $864m a year ago. The drop would be even worse, were it not for the exclusion of a $125m litigation settlement charge the company took last year related to its marketing services business. News Corp's publishing business was hit particularly hard by declines at its Australian and UK newspapers, as well as the absence of contributions from the closure of the News of the World. Carey said 2013 would be a flat year for publishing and that a recovery in UK business was likely to be offset by more losses in Australia. Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive, was not on the call, but said in a press release: "News Corporation is in a strong operational, strategic and financial position, which should only be enhanced by the proposed separation of the media and entertainment and publishing businesses." Murdoch's son, James, who stepped down from senior executive positions at BSkyB and News Corp in the UK earlier this year, was present on the conference call but was not asked any questions and did not speak. The media was allowed to listen in to the call but reporters were not permitted to ask questions.

I am a little biased in favor of Gerald Ford because the day that he became President, he told the media in answer to a question that he was reading my first book that had just been published, The Hundred Million Dollar Payoff. He declared that he reading my book for 15 minutes every night before going to bed. The Washington Star gave his statement a big play. Ford also sent me a letter when he was Vice President indicating how much he enjoyed the book. As a result of all this I was later a featured luncheon speaker at the 1976 GOP Presidential Convention in Kansas City where Ford was nominated to carry the GOP banner. He lost to Jim Carter that November. I previously had communication with Ford when he was a key leader in the House of Representatives after I published a book about Abe Fortas and why he should be forced to resign from the U.S.Supreme Court. Fortas later did so as the scandal surrounding him intensified. This all occurred while Watergate was still raging. With Agnew's departure, the office of Vice President had to be filled. I had told my closest political friends in Washington from the first day of Watergate that it was likely Nixon would be forced out of the presidency. It was always considered a possibility by many others and that is why the office had to be filled and why Agnew, who was too controversial, had to be forced to resign so that someone else could assume the mantle if Nixon, too, had to resign. Wow that is cool you had a POTUS read your book and acknowledge you like that. You must have made some serious dough back then I just checked your profile on this forum Mr. Caddy and you've had an incredible life! Excuse me for the next type but HOLY S@#T! You knew William F. Buckley, all these CIA guys like Hunt, and the WAtergate people, and even worked for Nixon! That's amazing. I don't think people like you exist much anymore, at least in my generation. Don't take this the wrong way, but if you died today, I would say you have lived a full life Ok, I got to ask, just tell me straight out, I know it's not the right forum, but Mr.Caddy, who killed John F. Kennedy? I have always believed that the ultimate decision to kill JFK was made by LBJ who was cunning and smart enough to insulate himself from the actual operation. Howard Hunt, who in his deathbed video revealed that he was a "benchwarmer" in the assassination operation, declared that at the top of the pyramid was LBJ who had an almost maniacal intent to become President.

Rebekah Brooks charged over phone hacking allegations Former News International chief executive formally charged over alleged phone hacking and will appear in court next month By Press Association guardian.co.uk, Thursday 2 August 2012 20.34 EDT Former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks was formally charged with phone hacking and will appear in court next month, Scotland Yard have said. Brooks, 44, answered bail at Lewisham police station and will appear at Westminster magistrates court on 3 September. Six other journalists from the News of the World, including David Cameron's former spin doctor Andy Coulson, have been officially charged and will appear at the same court on 16 August. The seven stand accused of one general charge of alleged phone hacking between October 2000 and August 2006 that could affect as many as 600 victims. Brooks, of Churchill, Oxford, and Coulson face specific charges of illegally accessing the voicemail of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler. The other former NoW staff who face court action are ex-managing editor Stuart Kuttner, former news editor Greg Miskiw, former head of news Ian Edmondson, ex-chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck and former reporter James Weatherup. In a statement issued last month, Brooks insisted she was innocent, adding: "The charge concerning Milly Dowler is particularly upsetting, not only as it is untrue but also because I have spent my journalistic career campaigning for victims of crime. I will vigorously defend these allegations." Brooks is already facing three counts of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, linked to the investigation into phone hacking. She and five others, including her racehorse trainer husband Charlie, who faces one count of the same offence, are due to appear at Southwark crown court in London on 26 September.