Steve Knight
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Posts posted by Steve Knight
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20-odd minutes left....still waiting for mushroom cloud cleaning up London's cess-pittery!
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80,000 spectators in the stadium.
15,000 volunteers for the show.
2,000+ athletes.
Security and staff.
No nuclear explosion!
Shock and horror!
Still, two weeks to go....
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8 of the 13 will face charges and prosecution!
Coulson, Thurlbeck and Brooks amongst them.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jul/22/rupert-murdoch-ni-resignation-analysis?newsfeed=true
Does Rupert Murdoch's retreat mark his long goodbye to the UK?
His resignations may be described as internal housekeeping but there is no likely family successor at News International
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Dan Sabbagh -
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 22 July 2012 20.54 BST
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Rupert Murdoch's decision to resign from his remaining News International directorships marks the latest step of an imperial retreat that could yet end with the media mogul's family cutting ties with his British newspapers.
The 81-year-old is no longer a director of a UK company for the first time since the late 1960s and, with such diminished political influence following the phone hacking scandal, has few reasons to come to Britain bar cursory stops to Wapping and family visits to his daughter Elisabeth.
Over the past 10 years, Murdoch visited the UK every two months, for board meetings at the satellite broadcaster Sky, where he was chairman, and to catch up with two men eager for his counsel, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
The company has done its best to cover Murdoch's withdrawal from three boards at News International, including the symbolically significant Times Newspaper Holdings board, the seat of independent directors whose job it is to safeguard the independence of the Times titles.
Executives said the move was a "corporate house cleaning exercise" in advance of a planned spinoff of Murdoch's global newspapers.
But this week could bring an uncomfortable reminder of what has brought the once-mighty Murdoch to this point.
Sue Akers, detective assistant commissioner at the Metropolitan police, gives evidence to the Leveson inquiry on Monday for the third time. She will present an update on the News of the World phone-hacking investigation and the corrupt payments inquiry that has led to Sun journalists being among those arrested in connection with the cases.
A decision should follow on whether to charge former News of the World journalists and executives, including, it is believed, Andy Coulson, and Murdoch's confidante, Rebekah Brooks, on hacking-related offences.
This month, Keir Starmer, director of public prosecutions, said the Crown Prosecution Service might decide whether to lay charges by the end of July if at all possible, with activity by prosecutors frequently following evidence give at Leveson.
As for News International – perhaps more significantly – following Murdoch's departure there will no longer be any family members on any of the company boards, except his eldest daughter by his first marriage, Prudence MacLeod, who has never held an executive role at her father's company. She sits on the Times Newspaper Holdings board.
That said, there is persistent internal speculation that, despite previous denials, Rupert would still like his eldest son, Lachlan, to be chief executive of the soon-to-be spun-off newspaper company – which would provide the most realistic hope of leaving the family running the newspaper business.
The job remains unfilled but given the protest votes against Lachlan and his younger brother, James, by independent News Corp investors at last year's annual meeting, it would require Herculean bloody-mindedness to hand him the job.
James Murdoch, previously the heir apparent, has moved to New York. He is damaged goods after the "cover up" of the hacking affair. He remains as a non-executive director at Sky, with no discernible enthusiasm for newspapers, and is thought to have been behind a last-ditch plan to sell News International last summer in a failed attempt to get through the takeover bid for Sky.
That leaves Elisabeth, the "anti-Murdoch Murdoch", in the words of one ally Murdoch, who runs News Corp's TV production company Shine, the maker of the series Masterchef. Untainted by phone hacking, she is due to speak at the Edinburgh television festival in August.
But while television is her lifelong interest, her focus is the larger part of News Corporation, the Fox-based company she hopes she might chair when Rupert retires. She too, in short, is no obvious long-term supporter of News International.
As for the short-term, Rupert Murdoch's own interest in the UK is fading. He might have overseen the launch of the Sun on Sunday in February, but since then he has been back to endure two days of questioning at the Leveson inquiry in April and again in the summer.
A combination of his age, lack of legal responsibilities and loss of political influence, reduce the need to leave his New York base and visit the UK.
His tweeting on Saturday night that Britain is "more an entitlement state" with "growing debts", and his questioning as to whether it was "too late" to change culture "and restore energy", could be interpreted as a loss of faith in the country where the Australian-born tycoon got his university education.
Meanwhile, at News International, nervousness remains. Journalists at the Times titles expect redundancies – perhaps of 100 people – after News International's chief executive, Tom Mockridge, said the loss-making papers would have to improve their performance as the newspapers prepared for life as an independent business. The true scale of losses at the Times and Sunday Times is unclear but could be as much as £60m.
Reporters at the Sun await the conclusion of the Met's Elveden inquiry into corrupt payments of public officials.
At both titles, there is the genuine belief that the Murdoch family will one day sell newspapers which it was once thought would never change hands.
The company might describe this as internal housekeeping but the way Murdoch's resignation of three British directorships will be understood is as the beginning of the end.
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Not even in a Tinfoil-wearing nutcase's most fervent wet dream....
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I'm a Brit, and *I* don't trust us!!!
Feel perfectly free to disparage our apathy and gullibility towards politicians and their vested interests, because I do, also!
Mind you, I do praise all that is sane we're not quite as bad as the American Republican party.
YET.
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Like I said, there's little about it in the MSM, so one doubts its validity.
Even more so with the style it's written in - I think the last time I saw something that propagandised, it was the Tea Smugglers protesting the removal of the tea tax, and thus undercutting their expensive free-enterprise, lauding dumping British Tea into Boston Harbor.
Still, there's this examination of the tale... http://fullfact.org/articles/secret_courts_summary_justice_council_tax-27504
EDIT : int he == in the*
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Written in something of an overly-jocular manner, this "case" doesn't seem to have been reported in MSM, here.
Man refuses to pay Council Tax because he disagrees with the government's funding of wars, etc.
Arrested.
Tried in secret with no representation or jury.
Jailed.
What's going on?!
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This was just on TV, almost word-for-word, as a documentary/exposé...with the same title!
Also, reminds me of this article from a year or so ago : Is Sugar Toxic? - NYTimes.com
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Leading article: The parallels between hacking and Watergate
Wednesday, 13 June 2012
The Independent
Forty years on, the malfeasance exposed by the Watergate scandal is hardly less shocking than it was at the time. What is different now, however, is the amount of information available.
It was thanks to the peerless efforts of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein that the conspiracy behind the Democratic Party headquarters break-in came out at all. But that, as they write in this newspaper today, was just the beginning. In the decades since, a steady drip of evidence – from secret tape transcriptions to public hearings – has filled in the blanks.
That the Watergate anniversary falls in the midst of the Leveson Inquiry cannot but invite parallels. Phone hacking is one thing: appalling, yes, but straightforwardly illegal. More telling is the light being shed on the overlapping, over-cosy world of Britain's political, media and business establishments. The Inquiry has its flaws. But the lesson from Watergate is not to give up.
Lol, funnily enough....I just made a post about that
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Special Report: Watergate - the untold story
Forty years ago this weekend, a failed burglary in Washington was the first small step in a giant political scandal that led to the fall of a US President. But, write the reporters whose investigations first exposed it, what came out then was as nothing to what we know now
Carl Bernstein , Bob Woodward Wednesday 13 June 2012
As Senator Sam Ervin completed his 20-year Senate career in 1974 and issued his final report as chairman of the Senate Watergate Committee, he posed the question: "What was Watergate?" Countless answers have been offered in the 40 years since 17 June 1972, when a team of burglars wearing business suits and rubber gloves was arrested at 2.30am at the headquarters of the Democratic Party in the Watergate office building.
Four days afterward, the Nixon White House offered its answer. "Certain elements may try to stretch this beyond what it was," press secretary Ronald Ziegler scoffed, dismissing the incident as a "third-rate burglary". History proved that it was anything but. Two years later, Richard Nixon would become the first and only US president to resign, his role in the criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice – the Watergate cover-up – definitively established. Another answer has since persisted, often unchallenged: the notion that the cover-up was worse than the crime. This idea minimises the scale and reach of Nixon's criminal actions.
Ervin's answer to his own question hints at the magnitude of Watergate: "To destroy, insofar as the presidential election of 1972 was concerned, the integrity of the process by which the president of the United States is nominated and elected." Yet Watergate was far more than that. At its most virulent, Watergate was a brazen and daring assault, led by Nixon himself, against the heart of American democracy: the Constitution, our system of free elections, the rule of law. Today, much more than when we first covered this story, an abundant record provides unambiguous answers and evidence about Watergate and its meaning. This record has expanded continuously over the decades with the transcription of hundreds of hours of Nixon's secret tapes, adding detail and context to the hearings in the Senate and House of Representatives; the trials and guilty pleas of about 40 Nixon aides and associates who went to jail; and the memoirs of Nixon and his deputies. Such documentation makes it possible to trace the President's personal dominance over a massive campaign of political espionage, sabotage and other illegal activities against his real or perceived opponents.
In the course of his 5 1/2-year presidency, beginning in 1969, Nixon launched and managed five successive and overlapping wars – against the anti-Vietnam War movement, the news media, the Democrats, the justice system and, finally, against history itself. All reflected a mindset and a pattern of behaviour that were uniquely and pervasively Nixon's: a willingness to disregard the law for political advantage, and a quest for dirt and secrets about his opponents as an organising principle of his presidency. Long before the Watergate break-in, gumshoeing, burglary, wiretapping and political sabotage had become a way of life in the Nixon White House.
What was Watergate? It was Nixon's five wars.
1. The war against the anti-war movement
Nixon's first war was against the anti-Vietnam War movement. The President considered it subversive and thought it constrained his ability to prosecute the war in South-east Asia on his terms. In 1970, he approved the top-secret Huston Plan, authorising the CIA, the FBI and military intelligence units to intensify electronic surveillance of individuals identified as "domestic security threats". The plan called for intercepting mail and lifting restrictions on "surreptitious entry" – that is, break-ins or "black-bag jobs."
Thomas Charles Huston, the White House aide who devised the plan, informed Nixon that it was illegal, but the President approved it. It was not formally rescinded until the FBI director J Edgar Hoover objected – not on principle, but because he considered those types of activities the FBI's turf. Undeterred, Nixon remained fixated on such operations.
In a memorandum dated 3 March 1970, presidential aide Patrick Buchanan wrote to Nixon about what he called the "institutionalised power of the left concentrated in the foundations that succour the Democratic Party". Of particular concern was the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank with liberal leanings.
On 17 June 1971 – exactly one year before the Watergate break-in – Nixon met in the Oval Office with his chief of staff, H R "Bob" Haldeman, and the national security adviser Henry Kissinger. At issue was a file about former President Lyndon Johnson's handling of the 1968 bombing halt in Vietnam.
"You can blackmail Johnson on this stuff, and it might be worth doing," Haldeman said, according to the tape of the meeting.
"Yeah," Kissinger said, "but Bob and I have been trying to put the damn thing together for three years." They wanted the complete story of Johnson's actions.
"Huston swears to God there's a file on it at Brookings," Haldeman said.
"Bob," Nixon said, "now you remember Huston's plan? Implement it.... I mean, I want it implemented on a thievery basis. God damn it, get in and get those files. Blow the safe and get it."
Nixon would not let the matter drop. Thirteen days later, according to another taped discussion with Haldeman and Kissinger, the President said: "Break in and take it out. You understand?"
The next morning, Nixon said: "Bob, get on the Brookings thing right away. I've got to get that safe cracked over there." And later that morning, he persisted, "Who's gonna break in the Brookings Institution?"
For reasons that have never been made clear, the break-in apparently was not carried out.
2. The war on the news media
Nixon's second war was waged ceaselessly against the press, which was reporting more insistently on the faltering Vietnam War and the effectiveness of the anti-war movement. Although Hoover thought he had shut down the Huston Plan, it was in fact implemented by high-level Nixon deputies. A "Plumbers" unit and burglary team were set up under the direction of the White House counsel John Ehrlichman and an assistant, Egil Krogh, and led by the operational chiefs of the future Watergate burglary, ex-CIA operative Howard Hunt and former FBI agent G Gordon Liddy. Hunt was hired as a consultant by Nixon's political aide Charles Colson.
An early assignment was to destroy the reputation of Daniel Ellsberg, who had provided the Pentagon Papers, a secret history of the Vietnam War, to the news media in 1971. Publication of the documents in The New York Times, The Washington Post and other newspapers had sent Nixon into rants and rages about Ellsberg, the anti-war movement, the press, Jews, the American left and liberals in Congress – all of whom he conflated. Though Ellsberg was already under indictment and charged with espionage, the team headed by Hunt and Liddy broke into the office of his psychiatrist, seeking information that might smear Ellsberg and undermine his credibility.
"You can't drop it," Nixon told Haldeman on 29 June 1971. "You can't let the Jew steal that stuff and get away with it. You understand?" He went on: "People don't trust these Eastern establishment people. He's Harvard. He's a Jew... and he's an arrogant intellectual."
Nixon's anti-Semitic rages were well-known to those who worked most closely with him, including some aides who were Jewish. As we reported in our 1976 book, The Final Days, he would tell his deputies, including Kissinger, that "the Jewish cabal is out to get me". In a 3 July 1971 conversation with Haldeman, he said: "The government is full of Jews. Second, most Jews are disloyal. You know what I mean?... generally speaking, you can't trust the bastards."
Ellsberg's leak seemed to feed his paranoia. In response to suspected leaks to the press about Vietnam, Kissinger had ordered FBI wiretaps in 1969 on the telephones of 17 journalists and White House aides, without court approval. Many news stories based on the purported leaks questioned progress in the American war effort, further fuelling the anti-war movement. In a tape from the Oval Office on 22 February 1971, Nixon said: "It would be so much easier, wouldn't it, to run this war in a dictatorial way, kill all the reporters and carry on the war."
"The press is your enemy," Nixon explained five days later in a meeting with Admiral Thomas H Moorer, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to another tape. "Understand that? Now, never act that way... give them a drink, you know, treat them nice, you just love it, you're trying to be helpful. But don't help the bastards. Ever. Because they're trying to stick the knife right in our groin."
3. The war against the Democrats
In Nixon's third war, he took the weapons in place – the Plumbers, wiretapping and burglary – and deployed them against the Democrats challenging his re-election. John N Mitchell, Nixon's campaign manager and confidante, met with Liddy at the Justice Department in early 1972, when Mitchell was Attorney General. Liddy presented a $1m plan for spying and sabotage during the upcoming presidential campaign, code-named "Gemstone".
According to the Senate Watergate report and Liddy's 1980 autobiography, he used multicolored charts prepared by the CIA to describe elements of the plan. Operation Diamond would neutralise anti-war protesters with mugging squads and kidnapping teams; Operation Coal would funnel cash to Shirley Chisholm, a black Congresswoman from Brooklyn seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, in an effort to sow racial and gender discord in the party; Operation Opal would use electronic surveillance against various targets, including the headquarters of Democratic presidential candidates Edmund Muskie and George McGovern; Operation Sapphire would station prostitutes on a yacht, wired for sound, off Miami Beach during the Democratic National Convention.
Mitchell rejected the plans and told Liddy to burn the charts. At a second meeting, less than three weeks later, Liddy presented a scaled-back, $500,000 version of the plan; Mitchell turned it down again. But soon after, Mitchell approved a $250,000 version, according to Jeb Magruder, the deputy campaign manager. It included intelligence-gathering on the Democrats through wiretaps and burglaries. Under oath, Mitchell later denied approving the plan. He testified that he told Magruder: "We don't need this. I'm tired of hearing it." By his own account, he did not object on the grounds that the plan was illegal.
On 10 October 1972, we wrote a story in The Post outlining the extensive sabotage and spying operations of the Nixon campaign and White House, particularly against Muskie, and stating that the Watergate burglary was not an isolated event. The story said that at least 50 operatives had been involved in the espionage and sabotage, many of them under the direction of a young California lawyer named Donald Segretti; several days later, we reported that Segretti had been hired by Dwight Chapin, Nixon's appointments secretary. (The Senate Watergate Committee later found more than 50 saboteurs, including 22 who were paid by Segretti.) Herbert Kalmbach, Nixon's personal attorney, paid Segretti more than $43,000 from leftover campaign funds for these activities. Throughout the operation, Segretti was contacted regularly by Howard Hunt.
The Senate investigation later provided more detail about the effectiveness of the covert efforts against Muskie, who in 1971 and early 1972 was considered by the White House to be the Democrat most capable of beating Nixon. The President's campaign had paid Muskie's chauffeur, a campaign volunteer named Elmer Wyatt, $1,000 a month to photograph internal memos, position papers, schedules and strategy documents, and deliver copies to Mitchell and Nixon's campaign staff.
Other sabotage directed at Muskie included bogus news releases and allegations of sexual improprieties against other Democratic candidates – produced on counterfeit Muskie stationery. A favoured dirty trick that caused havoc at campaign stops involved sweeping up the shoes that Muskie aides left in hotel hallways to be polished and then depositing them in a dumpster.
Haldeman, the White House chief of staff, advised Nixon of the Chapin-Segretti sabotage plan in May 1971, according to one of the President's tapes. In a memo to Haldeman and Mitchell dated 12 April 1972, Buchanan and another Nixon aide wrote: "Our primary objective, to prevent Senator Muskie from sweeping the early primaries, locking up the convention in April, and uniting the Democratic Party behind him for the fall, has been achieved."
The tapes also reveal Nixon's obsession with another Democrat: Senator Edward Kennedy. One of Hunt's earliest undertakings for the White House was to dig up dirt on Kennedy's sex life, building on a 1969 auto accident at Chappaquiddick, Massachusetts, that resulted in the death of a young Kennedy aide, Mary Jo Kopechne. Though Kennedy had vowed not to seek the presidency in 1972, he was certain to play a big role in the campaign.
"I'd really like to get Kennedy taped," Nixon told Haldeman in April 1971. According to Haldeman's 1994 book, The Haldeman Diaries, the President also wanted to have Kennedy photographed in compromising situations and leak the images to the press.
And when Kennedy received Secret Service protection as he campaigned for McGovern, the Democratic presidential nominee, Nixon and Haldeman discussed a novel plan to keep him under surveillance: they would insert a retired Secret Service agent, Robert Newbrand, who had been part of Nixon's protection detail when he was Vice-President, into the team protecting Kennedy. "We just might get lucky and catch this son of a bitch and ruin him for '76," replied the President. "That's going to be fun."
On 8 September 1971, Nixon ordered Ehrlichman to direct the Internal Revenue Service to investigate the tax returns of all the likely Democratic presidential candidates, as well as Kennedy. "There's a lot of gold in them thar hills," Nixon said.
4. The war on justice
The arrest of the Watergate burglars set in motion Nixon's fourth war, against the American system of justice. It was a war of lies and hush money, a conspiracy that became necessary to conceal the roles of top officials and to hide the President's campaign of illegal espionage and political sabotage, including the covert operations that Mitchell described as "the White House horrors" during the Watergate hearings: the Huston Plan, the Plumbers, the Ellsberg break-in, Liddy's Gemstone plan and the proposed break-in at Brookings.
In a 23 June 1972 tape recording, six days after the arrests at the Watergate, Haldeman warned Nixon that "on the investigation, you know, the Democratic break-in thing, we're back in the problem area, because the FBI is not under control... their investigation is now leading into some productive areas, because they've been able to trace the money".
Haldeman said Mitchell had come up with a plan for the CIA to claim that national security secrets would be compromised if the FBI did not halt its Watergate investigation. Nixon approved the scheme and ordered Haldeman to call in the CIA director Richard Helms and his deputy Vernon Walters. "Play it tough," the President directed. "That's the way they play it, and that's the way we are going to play it."
The contents of the tape were made public on 5 August 1974. Four days later, Nixon resigned.
Another tape captured discussions in the Oval Office on 1 August 1972, six weeks after the burglars' arrest and the day on which The Post published our first story showing that Nixon campaign funds had gone into the bank account of one of the burglars. Nixon and Haldeman discussed paying off the burglars and their leaders to keep them from talking to federal investigators. "They have to be paid," Nixon said. "That's all there is to that."
On 21 March 1973, in one of the most memorable Watergate exchanges caught on tape, Nixon met with his counsel, John W Dean, who since the break-in had been given the task of co-ordinating the cover-up.
"We're being blackmailed" by Hunt and the burglars, Dean reported, and more people "are going to start perjuring themselves".
"How much money do you need?" Nixon asked.
"I would say these people are going to cost $1m over the next two years," Dean replied.
"And you could get it in cash," the President said. "I know where it could be gotten. I mean, it's not easy, but it could be done."
Hunt was demanding $120,000 immediately. They discussed executive clemency for him and the burglars.
"I am not sure that you will ever be able to deliver on the clemency," Dean said. "It may just be too hot."
"You can't do it till after the '74 election, that's for sure," Nixon declared.
Haldeman then entered the room and Nixon led the search for ways "to take care of the jackasses who are in jail". They discussed a secret $350,000 stash of cash kept in the White House, the possibility of using priests to help hide payments to the burglars, "washing" the money though Las Vegas or New York bookmakers, and empanelling a new grand jury so everyone could plead the Fifth Amendment or claim memory failure. Finally, they decided to send Mitchell on an emergency fundraising mission.
The President praised Dean's efforts: "You handled it just right. You contained it. Now after the election, we've got to have another plan."
5. The war on history
Nixon's final war, waged even to this day by some former aides and historical revisionists, aims to play down the significance of Watergate and present it as a blip on the President's record. Nixon lived for 20 years after his resignation and worked tirelessly to minimise the scandal.
Though he had accepted a full pardon from President Gerald Ford, Nixon insisted that he had not participated in any crimes. In his 1977 television interviews with British journalist David Frost, he said that he had "let the American people down" but that he had not obstructed justice. "I didn't think of it as a cover-up. I didn't intend a cover-up. Let me say, if I intended the cover-up, believe me, I would have done it." In his 1978 memoir RN, Nixon addressed his role in Watergate: "My actions and omissions, while regrettable and possibly indefensible, were not impeachable." Twelve years later, in his book In the Arena, he decried a dozen "myths" about Watergate and claimed that he was innocent of many of the charges made against him. One myth, he said, was that he ordered the payment of hush money to Hunt and others. Yet, the 21 March 1973 tape shows that he ordered Dean to get the money 12 times.
Even now, there are old Nixon hands and defenders who dismiss the importance of Watergate or claim that key questions remain unanswered. This year, Thomas Mallon, director of the creative writing programme at George Washington University, published a novel called Watergate, a sometimes witty and entirely fictional story featuring many of the real players. Frank Gannon, a former Nixon White House aide who now works for the Nixon Foundation, reviewed the book for The Wall Street Journal. "What emerges from Watergate is an acute sense of how much we still don't know about the events of June 17, 1972," Gannon wrote. "Who ordered the break-in?... What was its real purpose? Was it purposely botched? How much was the CIA involved? And how did a politician as tough and canny as Richard Nixon allow himself to be brought down by a 'third rate burglary?' Your guess is as good as mine."
Of course, Gannon is correct in noting that there are some unanswered questions – but not the big ones. By focusing on the supposed paucity of details concerning the burglary of 17 June 1972, he would divert us from the larger story. And about that story, there is no need to guess.
In the summer of 1974, it was neither the press nor the Democrats who rose up against Nixon, but the President's own Republican Party. On 24 July, the Supreme Court ruled 8-0 that Nixon would have to turn over the secret tapes demanded by the Watergate special prosecutor. Three of the President's appointees to the court – Chief Justice Warren E Burger, Justice Harry Blackmun and Justice Lewis Powell – joined that opinion. The other Nixon appointee, Justice William Rehnquist, recused himself.
Three days later, six Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee joined the Democrats in voting to recommend Nixon's impeachment by a vote of 27-11 for nine acts of obstruction of justice in the Watergate cover-up. By August, Nixon's impending impeachment in the House was a certainty and a group of Republicans led by Senator Barry Goldwater banded together to declare his presidency over. "Too many lies, too many crimes," Goldwater said.
On 7 August the group visited Nixon at the White House. How many votes would he have in a Senate trial? the President asked. "I took kind of a nose count today," Goldwater replied, "and I couldn't find more than four very firm votes, and those would be from older Southerners. Some are very worried about what's been going on, and are undecided, and I'm one of them."
The next day, Nixon went on national television and announced that he would resign.
In his last remarks about Watergate as a senator, 77-year-old Sam Ervin, a revered constitutionalist respected by both parties, posed a final question: "Why was Watergate?" The President and his aides, Ervin said, had "a lust for political power". That lust "blinded them to ethical considerations and legal requirements".
Nixon had lost his moral authority as President. His secret tapes will probably be his most lasting legacy. On them, he is heard talking almost endlessly about what would be good for him, his place in history and his grudges, animosities and schemes for revenge. The dog that never seems to bark is any discussion of what is good and necessary for the well-being of the nation.
The Watergate that we wrote about in The Washington Post from 1972 to 1974 is not Watergate as we know it today. It was only a glimpse into something far worse. By the time he was forced to resign, Nixon had turned his White House into a criminal enterprise.
On the day he left 9 August 1974, Nixon gave an emotional farewell speech. His family stood with him. Near the end of his remarks, he waved his arm, as if to highlight the most important thing he had to say. "Always remember," he said, "others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself."
His hatred had brought about his downfall. Nixon apparently grasped this insight, but it was too late. He had already destroyed himself.
Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward are co-authors of two Watergate books, 'All the President's Men' (1974) and 'The Final Days' (1976). © Washington Post 2012
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Murdoch did try to dictate government policy on EU, says Major
Starkest evidence of political interference as ex-PM recalls threat to withdraw papers' support
Martin Hickman
Wednesday 13 June 2012Rupert Murdoch threatened the Conservatives that unless they changed policy on Europe they would lose the support of his newspapers, Sir John Major revealed yesterday, in the starkest evidence so far of the media tycoon's interference in politics.
The former Prime Minister told the Leveson Inquiry that the proprietor of The Sun and The Times made the threat over dinner in February 1997.
"Mr Murdoch said he really didn't like our European policies," he told Lord Justice Leveson. "That was no surprise to me. He wished me to change our European policies. If we couldn't change our European policies his papers could not, would not support our Conservative Government."
"As I recall he used the word 'we' when referring to his newspapers," added Sir John, who was Prime Minister between 1990 and 1997. "He didn't make the usual nod to editorial independence." The comments flatly contradict Mr Murdoch's evidence to the inquiry on 25 April, when the News Corp chief executive said under oath: "I have never asked a Prime Minister for anything."
Explaining the circumstances of the meeting, which he said took place on 2 February 1997, Sir John said: "Just before the 1997 election it was suggested to me I ought to try to make some effort to get closer to the Murdoch papers. I agreed I would invite Mr Murdoch to dinner."
During the discussion, Mr Murdoch was "edging towards" a referendum on Britain's membership of the EU. Sir John, who fought running Parliamentary battles with Tory eurosceptics, added: "There was no question of me changing our policies."
Saying he remembered the discussion clearly, the 69-year-old told Lord Justice Leveson: "It is not often someone sits in front of a Prime Minister and says to a Prime Minister 'I would like you to change your policy or my organisation cannot support you'. It is unlikely to be something I would have forgotten."
A News International spokeswoman did not contradict Sir John's remarks, but pointed out that its titles did not act in unison at the 1997 election: "The Sunday Times supported John Major, The Times was neutral, and The Sun and the News of the World supported Labour."
Calling for tougher controls on irresponsible journalism, Sir John criticised Mr Murdoch and parts of his empire. He said that the "sheer scale" of Mr Murdoch's perceived influence was "an unattractive facet in British national life," noting that he held considerable power despite being unable to vote in the UK.
In a lighter moment, he was also asked about an incident involving the then editor of The Sun, Kelvin MacKenzie. According to Fleet Street folklore, at the height of the "Black Wednesday" exchange rate crisis in 1992, Sir John phoned the editor to ask him how he would cover the story.
"Well, John, let me put it this way – I've got a large bucket of xxxx lying on my desk and tomorrow morning I'm going to pour it all over your head," Mr MacKenzie is said to have replied.
But yesterday Sir John said he could not remember that particular phrase.
"I have read the alleged conversation with a degree of wonder and surprise," he said, "I frankly can't recall the bit that has entered mythology.
"I'm sure I would not have forgotten that but I don't recall it." Confirming that the call did take place, he told the inquiry it had been the only time he had telephoned Mr MacKenzie and added: "I was certainly never going to do so again."
Sir John also gave personal examples of bad behaviour by newspapers. In one episode, he said, he was called and falsely told his son's girlfriend required emergency surgery after an accident, but that the hospital needed to know first of all whether she was pregnant or not.
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Or the original "V" series...wasn't that about the same time Icke went batxxxx crazy and left mainstream TV?
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http://www.guardian....y?newsfeed=true
Andy Coulson detained by police for suspected perjury
Strathclyde police hold David Cameron's ex-communications chief on suspicion of perjury at Glasgow high court
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Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent
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guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 30 May 2012 10.16 BST
Andy Coulson, David Cameron's former director of communications and ex-News of the World editor, has been detained by Strathclyde police on suspicion of committing perjury.
A police spokeswoman said: "I can confirm officers from Strathclyde police's Operation Rubicon team detained a 44-year-old man in London this morning under Section 14 of the Criminal Procedure Scotland Act on suspicion of committing perjury at the high court in Glasgow.
"It would be inappropriate to comment further in this case."
More details soon …
EDIT (Updated article) :-
Andy Coulson, David Cameron's former director of communications, has been detained by police investigating alleged perjury at the trial of the Scottish socialist politician Tommy Sheridan.
Strathclyde police said Coulson was detained in London for questioning on Wednesday morning in connection with evidence the former News of the World editor gave during Sheridan's own trial for perjury in December 2010.
Coulson, who was then serving as the prime minister's chief media adviser at 10 Downing Street, was called as a defence witness by Sheridan, who was on trial for lying in court when he won a £200,000 defamation action against the NoW.
The former NoW editor was questioned over two days at the high court in Glasgow by Sheridan, who conducted his own defence, about his knowledge of a hacking operation against Sheridan carried out by Glenn Mulcaire.
During the trial, Sheridan produced documentary evidence that he had been twice targeted by Mulcaire, a private detective hired by the NoW, in 2004.
It has since emerged that other close members of Sheridan's family and associates were also named and potentially targeted by Mulcaire, including the politician's mother, Alice Sheridan, and the Scottish politician Joan McAlpine, a former friend of his who co-wrote a book on Sheridan's anti-poll tax campaign in the early 1990s.
Strathclyde police, in tandem with senior prosecutors at the Crown Office, Scotland's prosecution authority, launched an inquiry into alleged perjury at Sheridan's trial and into hacking in Scotland last autumn. The investigation, Operation Rubicon, involved at least 50 detectives.
Under Scottish police procedure, Coulson has not been formally arrested as he has not yet been charged.
This is the second time he has been detained in connection with the wider hacking affair: he has already been arrested by the Metropolitan police as part of its investigations into NI.
In a brief statement, a Strathclyde police spokeswoman said: "I can confirm officers from Strathclyde police's Operation Rubicon team detained a 44-year-old man in London this morning.
"It is under section 14 of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 on suspicion of committing perjury before the high court in Glasgow."
Sheridan was convicted by a majority verdict at the high court in December 2010 over his evidence relating to lying to former colleagues in the Scottish Socialist party about his private life when he sued the NoW in 2006 for libel over allegations about his sex life.
The jury at that libel hearing at the court of session in Edinburgh found in Sheridan's favour, and the then Scottish Socialist party leader was awarded £200,000 in damages.
Payment of those damages has been delayed after NI appealed against the verdict; that case has been suspended pending the outcome of Operation Rubicon investigation.
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Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent
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Indeed. But he went about it totally the wrong way, and smarmy Bliar easily dismissed his claims.
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lol. Some nutter "broke" into the Leveson rooms through a supposedly-secure corridor, and called Blair a "War Criminal", accusing him of receiving money from JP Morgan to allow them to rip Iraqi banks off for £20billion....
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Exclusive extract: How Cameron tried to evade Murdoch's embrace
In 2005, the Tories' new leader was determined to keep the media mogul at arm's length, but by 2007 the game was up, and Andy Coulson was on board. In their new book, Francis Elliott and James Hanning chart the dramatic change of plan
Francis Elliott , James Hanning
Sunday 20 May 2012
For the first 15 months after Cameron won the leadership election, his media team, led by George Eustice and with the support of Steve Hilton and Oliver Letwin, had adopted a strategy of arms' length engagement with the press. Hilton was among those who believed that no longer was the printed word a major leader of public opinion. People were now less deferential to thunderous editorials from on high. They made up their own minds, thank you.
Hilton and Eustice had sold the idea of a new arrangement with the press barons, whereby a greater, healthier distance was kept and the democratic process would be all the better for it. Television was to be the new battleground. There was to be "no more sucking up to Murdoch". It was a defiant and refreshing departure from the Tony Blair textbook.
There were to be other, tougher aspects of this new approach, and they had largely been vindicated, not least when a well-prepared Cameron outfoxed Jeremy Paxman during the leadership campaign. Cameron and his team had taken a muscularly non-committal approach to mounting calls to "come clean" on whether the leader had ever taken Class A drugs. Editors in supportive papers who offered to "do the drugs story sympathetically" were politely told that Cameron was allowed to have a past, before he became a politician, that was free of scrutiny.
In other words, Cameron's people expressed a novel "no thanks, we'll play this game our way" attitude. And it seemed to be working. In August 2006, the Tories had established a good lead in the polls. Such insolence was not appreciated by the Murdoch-owned Sun, which asserted in its leader column that Cameron did not deserve his lead. Murdoch's critics took this to mean "we have not endorsed him yet".
But the plan was to turn out to be no more than an experiment. By early 2007, the sunny hopes for a new politics were already fading. Cameron was struggling to convince a great many in his party that he was a Conservative at all, and with the Labour government anticipating a rise in their poll ratings with the expected accession of the comparatively untainted figure of Gordon Brown, the arms' length relationship with the Murdochs looked needlessly bold.
The previous summer he had made the notorious proclamation that became known as his "hug a hoodie" speech. The press reception had been hostile, but for Eustice and Hilton this was no more than was to be expected. "Yes, yes, we'll carry on," said Cameron, evidently less convinced than his aides. At their encouragement, "to show we wouldn't be bullied", as one confidant put it, he followed up with a speech of comparable tone and surprise value. Cameron was the object of yet more consternation from his natural supporters and their mouthpieces in the press. When his closest media advisers proposed a third such speech, Cameron, in a typically Cameronian way, said: "I'm sure you're right... but how much more of this do we have to do?"
To emphasise his declining faith in the new approach, he invited comparison with the never-say-die "invincible knight" from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, whose bravado led him to having all his limbs cut off but who insisted on shouting fatuously at his triumphant adversary: "Tis but a flesh wound!"
This was Cameron's lighthearted way of saying enough was enough. In fact, he felt things were getting very serious. With the austere but principled Gordon Brown waiting to sweep away the perception of Labour as polished but shallow, Cameron needed to be at the top of his game. Indeed, what would happen if Brown were to call an early election?
Cameron knew Brown had good relations with both Rupert Murdoch and Paul Dacre, editor-in-chief of the Daily Mail. Why should either newspaper group go against the personal preference of its most senior executive and endorse Cameron? Charlie Brooks, who at that point was at the start of his relationship with Rebekah Wade, told a friend that Rupert Murdoch – whose pedigree in picking winners was second to none – believed there would never be another Etonian in No 10 again. The thought occurred to Cameron that he could be out of his job by the end of the year.
"David got very tetchy at around that time," says Cameron's friend. "His apparent breezy confidence often hides a lack of exactly that, and David had a really major wobble that spring."
"We tested the new strategy to destruction," remembers George Eustice. "But the knowledge that Gordon Brown, the ultimate licker-of-the-boots of the Murdoch regime, was coming in meant that Cameron was likely to be portrayed as loftily out of touch rather than right, so we had to abandon the experiment. David stuck with my strategy as long as he could," remembers Eustice, "but having reluctantly abandoned the 'keep your distance' approach, he then embraced the 'OK, let's do what everyone else does', and let's do it properly stance."
Someone else close to Cameron's thinking added: "George Osborne in particular, and to a lesser extent Michael Gove, thought it was part of the New Labour playbook to get Murdoch on side. Keen on the traditional idea of wooing the media. We might not like it, it's just the way of the world. However unpleasant these people may be, however much you may not like them, you have to play their game and go to their parties."
So, notwithstanding Cameron's previous coolness to Murdoch, a legacy of Carlton TV's defeats at the Australian's hands, it was all systems go to get Murdoch on side. The brave talk ("We don't need bloody Murdoch!", as one of Cameron's strategists had put it privately) was set to one side, and every opportunity to impress News International was to be grasped with alacrity.
As luck (if that is the word) would have it, there seemed an admirable way of killing two birds with one stone close at hand, the appointment of Andy Coulson, who had recently resigned from the editorship of the News of the World.
For all his outward lack of concern, by 2008 David Cameron was becoming worried about the phone-hacking story. With the next election still a couple of years away, according to a friend of Cameron, the leader asked Coulson outright if he had known anything about the phone hacking, to which he replied: "Categorically not."
In a private context, he also asked people with extensive dealings in newspaper regulation, who he had good reason to believe would be familiar with the workings of the grubbier end of Fleet Street. In good faith, it is fair to assume, they too reassured him that he had little to worry about.
When, in August 2008, Cameron and his family were invited to visit Rupert Murdoch's yacht Rosehearty, the flights to Santorini were paid for by Matthew Freud (which concerned some of Cameron's advisers more than it did him). For Freud, this was the ultimate piece of political matchmaking. This was jet-setting of the old school.
But in a private one-on-one, Cameron asked Murdoch directly about the continued rumblings about his press chief. Murdoch replied that, as far as he was concerned, the police knew everything. There was no new evidence of wrongdoing. He blamed his political enemies in the British media for stirring up trouble.
The trouble was that the "stirring" didn't stop. The House of Commons Select Committee for Culture, Media and Sport spent a considerable amount of time investigating media standards, eventually concluding that it was "inconceivable" that none of the News of the World employees past and present had known about the phone hacking and accused senior executives of suffering from "collective amnesia".
Cameron was to seek assurances from Murdoch again before the 2010 election, and Murdoch's answer was the same. In that case, said Cameron, he would stand by Andy and make sure the "witch hunt" was unsuccessful. The Murdoch reassurance chimed with Cameron, whose cast of mind inclined him to believe that if the police had found nothing, there must be nothing there.
But a slight switch to how Cameron responded to questions about Coulson was introduced. As a close colleague says: "When there's a bit of doubt, the position shifts, the language changes." And so it did on this occasion. Previously, on the rare occasions he had been asked, he would offer a vague suggestion that he was led to believe Coulson knew nothing about the phone hacking. But now, on 10 July 2009, the words "I believe in giving people a second chance" received their first airing.
By 2009, the Tories began to show a new antipathy to the BBC, floating the freezing of the licence fee and urging the corporation to "do more with less". The Tories and the Murdochs shared a striking identity of interests. With the Tories looking good in the polls, what more could the media empire ask for?
Just a few weeks later, at the most damaging of moments for Labour (ie, during its conference), The Sun announced it was to support the Conservatives in the next election. But still the phone-hacking story wouldn't go away.
Representations were believed to have been made by senior courtiers at Buckingham Palace, which had always been unhappy at Coulson working by Cameron's side in opposition, but hitherto had been pacified by Coulson's intention to find another job after the election, according to an unimpeachable royal source. The Palace insists the Queen herself did not initiate an attempt to influence Downing Street staffing, but acknowledges the possibility that Cameron's circle was sent a message informally about the feelings of the Royal Household about the prospect of the former News of the World editor in Downing Street.
Expressions of concern were also made to Cameron's office, at least, by Nick Clegg, Lord Ashdown, Zac Goldsmith, Sir Max Hastings, Daily Mail editor-in-chief Paul Dacre and others. And a more surprising voice spoke to him to question whether Coulson should follow his master into Downing Street: that of Coulson himself, who worried that he was becoming an embarrassment to Cameron.
Cameron waved his concerns away – he needed him, he was coming to Downing Street. It was a terrible mistake for both of them. Had Coulson left at the election, the interest in hacking might have largely died away. His presence at the heart of Britain's government, however, redoubled determination to expose the truth.
On 1 September 2010, The New York Times published a lengthy account of the extent of phone hacking at News International. Cameron was lobbied yet again by those who felt he was being overgenerous to Coulson, and told a friend at the time: "I can't go round sacking people on hearsay. There's no evidence against Andy." But he did also say to a close friend at the time: "If it does turn out he's been lying to me, he'll be out of here tomorrow."
But while Cameron toughed it out, there had been a change of attitude inside News International. Emails emerged that, it was reported, showed much wider knowledge of unlawful activity than had been previously admitted.
At around this time, with Murdoch furious at not having been told the full extent of what had been going on, it was made known to Cameron that he should no longer feel obliged to protect Coulson. In fact, Coulson had been telling an unheeding Cameron for some months that he felt he should stand down, and on 21 January he resigned as director of communications.
Extracted from 'Cameron: Practically a Conservative' by Francis Elliott and James Hanning, published by Fourth Estate, £10.99. Copyright Francis Elliott and James Hanning, 2012
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He mioght have been real drunk while watching a re-run of the ''Red Dwarf'' episode on the assassination and kinda gotten a bit mixed up re reality and fiction?.
Was ther a Red Dwarf one on this then? I never saw it. I presume it was one of the latter series...
Kinda/Sorta.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tikka_to_Ride
Time drive. Battle with their future, corrupt and greedy selves. Goes back in time to November, 1963, and accidentally knock the assassin out of the Book Repository.
3 years later, Kennedy's been impeached, in some Mafia scandal...and J Edgar became president....
They go back, and try to fix the mess, but make things worse, naturally. So Lister has an idea, to go forward, and get the newly-released-from-jail Kennedy to go back to 1963, stand on the grassy knoll, and assassinate himself.
"This will really mess with the Conspiracy Theorists' heads!"
:lol: -
He mioght have been real drunk while watching a re-run of the ''Red Dwarf'' episode on the assassination and kinda gotten a bit mixed up re reality and fiction?.
"Hey! I still didn't get my curry!"
:lol: -
Maybe it's time to exhume him, and run some DNA tests?
Can't say I've ever heard that particular theory.....but I haven't really dug deep into the history. I kinda stopped at the "Book Depository -> car was so easy a shot that an 8 year-old could make it".....
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18075775
15 May 2012 Last updated at 18:45
Rebekah Brooks anger over charge in phone-hacking probe
Rebekah Brooks has expressed anger after she was charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice over the phone-hacking inquiry.
Her husband, Charlie, three of Mrs Brooks's staff, and News International security head Mark Hanna, are also charged with the offence.
Mrs Brooks said she was "baffled" to face charges which were "an expensive sideshow, a waste of public money".
They will appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on 13 June.
They have been charged with offences including concealing documents and computers from police.
The charges, which relate to alleged offences in July last year, are the first in an inquiry lasting 18 months - more than 40 other people remain on police bail in the investigation.
In a statement delivered outside her solicitor's London office, while standing next to her racehorse trainer husband, Mrs Brooks said: "One day the details of this case will emerge and people will see today as nothing more than an expensive sideshow."
Mr Brooks said he had been used as a "scapegoat" to "ratchet up the pressure" on his wife, who he claimed was the victim of a
"witch-hunt".
The ex-News of the World editor herself said she was "baffled" by the decision.
She described the investigation as a "waste of public money" and added: "One day the details of this case will emerge and people will see today as nothing more than an expensive sideshow."
Mrs Brooks was editor of the News of the World (NoW) when voicemails on murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler's mobile phone were allegedly intercepted.
She quit as chief executive of News International in July 2011 - the same month as the alleged conspiracy offences are said to have taken place - after the phone-hacking scandal led to the paper's closure.
Mrs Brooks, 43, from Churchill, Oxfordshire, has denied any knowledge of phone hacking on her watch.
Announcing the decision to charge the six, the director of public prosecutions' senior legal adviser, Alison Levitt, QC, said she was making a statement "in the interests of transparency and accountability".
Mrs Brooks was arrested on 13 March as part of Operation Weeting.
She is charged with conspiring with her 49-year-old husband, personal assistant Cheryl Carter, chauffeur Paul Edwards, security man Daryl Jorsling, and News International head of security Mr Hanna to "conceal material" from police between 6 and 19 July.
In a second charge Mrs Brooks and Ms Carter are accused of conspiring to remove seven boxes of material from the News International archive between 6 and 9 July.
In a third charge, Mr and Mrs Brooks, Mr Hanna, Mr Edwards and Mr Jorsling are accused of conspiring to conceal documents, computers and other electronic equipment from police officers between 15 and 19 July.
A seventh unnamed suspect, who also provided security for Mrs Brooks, will not be charged.
Lawyer Henri Brandman said Ms Carter, 48, from Chelmsford, Essex, "vigorously" denied the charge she faced and thanked her family and friends for their support during this "most unhappy period of her life".
Mr Hanna said he would be "totally exonerated", adding that he was innocent of the charges against him and he had "no doubt that ultimately justice will prevail".
Mrs Brooks became editor of the NoW in 2000 at the age of 31 before she took up the same role at the Sun three years later.
She was made chief executive of News International in 2009 and resigned in July 2011.
She was arrested a few days later on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications and corruption, and remains on bail without charge for those alleged offences.
Mrs Brooks was then re-arrested on 13 March on suspicion of conspiring to pervert the course.
On Friday, appearing at the Leveson Inquiry into press ethics, Mrs Brooks said that Prime Minister David Cameron sent her a "keep your head up" message when she quit News International.
The BBC's June Kelly said the developments were likely to be "highly embarrassing" for Mr Cameron who attended Eton College with Mr Brooks and was a friend of both the racehorse trainer and his wife.
Our correspondent said of Mrs Brooks: "For a decade she was close to those at top of Scotland Yard but for the past year the force, which once loaned her a horse, has been investigating her.
"The woman who, for so long, wielded power and influence in British public life must now begin preparing for her first court appearance."
Mr Jorsling, 39, from Ash Vale, near Guildford, Surrey; Mr Edwards, 47, of Kilburn, west London; and Mr Hanna, 49, from Buckingham, Bucks, were all notified of the charges on Tuesday.
Scotland Yard is conducting three investigations relating to phone-hacking.
Operation Weeting is looking into allegations of hacking by the NoW into private voicemails, Operation Elveden is examining allegations that journalists from News International made "inappropriate" payments to police, and Operation Tuleta is investigating computer hacking.
Analysis
Home affairs correspondent
The Crown Prosecution Service performed two tests before charging Rebekah Brooks and others: Was the evidence good enough to have a realistic chance of a conviction - and would a prosecution be in the public interest?
Conspiring to pervert the course of justice is a serious crime. It has to be tried in the Crown Court before a jury and can, in theory, lead to a life sentence.
But in practice the sentencing range is huge because it comes down to the severity of the offence and the nature of any cover-up.
In one recent case, a defendant was jailed for three years for concealing evidence in a fatal accident.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18062485
15 May 2012 Last updated at 10:03
Rebekah Brooks to be charged over phone hacking
Rebekah Brooks and her husband, Charlie, are to be charged with perverting the course of justice as part of the phone hacking inquiry.
She was arrested on 13 March as part of the Met Police's Operation Weeting.
In a statement, they accused the CPS of "posturing" and said: "We deplore this weak and unjust decision."
The couple will become the first suspects to be charged in an inquiry lasting 18 months and involving 185 police officers and staff.
Revealing the charges ahead of a CPS announcement, the couple said: "We have this morning been informed by the Office of the Department of Public Prosecutions that we are to be charged with perverting the course of justice."
They added: "We deplore this weak and unjust decision.
"After the further unprecedented posturing of the CPS we will respond later today after our return from the police station."
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Breaking news :
Rebekah Brooks has been charged with Perverting the Course of Justice.
I'll post a link as soon as they update their sites
Edit : This announcement broken by Brooks herself, BEFORE the CPS ... what a ...Witch!! Totally not the way things are done.
Edit 2: Here we go...
Rebekah Brooks to be charged with perverting the course of justice
Former News International chief executive and her husband to be charged in phone-hacking inquiry
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Sandra Laville, crime correspondent -
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 15 May 2012 09.56 BST
Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of News International, is to be charged with perverting the course of justice, the Crown Prosecution Service said on Tuesday.
Brooks, who was arrested in March by Scotland Yard officers investigating phone hacking, is the first person to face charges in the major criminal investigation into hacking and allegations of bribing public officials.
Her husband, Charlie Brooks, the racehorse trainer and friend of the prime minister, is also to be charged, the CPS announced.
They will be summonsed to court where the charges will be formally laid.
The charges are the first since Operation Weeting began. Scotland Yard has budgeted for three linked inquiries to run to 2015 at a cost of more than £40m. The CPS is still studying four more files which have been passed to them by detectives investigating phone hacking, leaks and alleged bribes to the police.
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http://politicsuk-newsheadline.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/leveson-probe-sham-says-singer.html
PoliticsUK, as an organisation, does not support or endorse any views on this blog. www.facebook.com/politicsuk
Tuesday, 8 May 2012
Leveson probe 'sham', says singer
Singer George Michael has claimed he was asked to speak to the Leveson Inquiry into press standards but declined, dismissing it as a sham.
As part of a series of tweets posted on Twitter, the star said: "I was asked to talk to the Leveson inquiry, but I declined. It's all bulls**t.
"It has been several years since two hacking journalists were sent to prison for bugging the royal family. They remain the only people who have been tried in the criminal courts.
"After all these years, and all the crimes committed by journos, editors, the police force and MPs the best can do is 'enquiry' after inquiry, and no actual criminal prosecutions?
"Why on earth are the rights of the royal family more important than those of Milly Dowler's parents, or of any of the hundreds of people whose lives have been violated by the press?
"Shame on our political system for it's refusal to take this further. The day they make this sham real and start genuinely prosecuting people I would more than happy to help.
....till then, what's the point."During the 15-tweet rant Michael also attacked the Daily Mail, as well as calling Prime Minister David Cameron the "most cowardly PM we've seen for decades".
But a spokesman for the Leveson Inquiry said George Michael had never been asked to give evidence.
The star's comments come just days before former News International executive Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson are expected to make embarrassing revelations about British politicians' attempts to woo Rupert Murdoch's newspapers.
Mr Coulson, David Cameron's former communications director, will appear before the inquiry on Thursday followed by Mrs Brooks on Friday, and their potentially explosive evidence could overshadow David Cameron's efforts to relaunch the coalition's programme after bruising local election results for the Conservatives and Lib Dems.
©Press Association
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lol. He does make a point....but since when does British justice run on "Guilty until proven innocent"?
And can anyone take anything of value from inquiry after inquiry after inquiry that never seem to get anywhere...?
Would a half-arsed prosecution in a court be any better?
Edit : Format buggered up again :\
....till then, what's the point."
WILL 100,000 Die at the London Olympics 2012 ?
in Political Conspiracies
Posted
You should watch that video you linked. It states something WILL happen because of some spy drama and a "what if...?" documentary were shown at some point in the last couple of years on the BBC....
SO, the answer to that question is : Nope. But I'll wait, and poke fun at the idiocy while waiting for the Spack Gurls to shut up caterwauling and get off stage....
And the show's over. Clean-up's a-waitin', and nothing has happened. Again. The answer to that question is still "nope". But nevermind, there's always Rio in 4 years. Maybe Brazil's national channel will show some sort of spy drama about a nuke in Rio, too....