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4 hours ago
Tuesday, 6 September 2011
Will anyone ever have the conscience to apologise for what happened at Hillsborough?
It is not a tidal wave because what is provoking it happened 22 years ago and, however monstrous an outrage, the business of day-by-day living inevitably dissipates even the hardest of pain and anger.
Yet if all those from Prime Minister-level down who have been seeking to cover up the true cause of disaster all these years, who have bombarded the grieving with evasions and bromides and – as in the case of a letter from the Chief Constable of South Yorkshire to this newspaper yesterday – non sequiturs, haven't known it before, surely they do now.
Hillsborough is not going to go away. It is not destined to subside beneath the weight of government stalling or still another round of police doubletalk.
More than the required 100,000 have now petitioned for a parliamentary debate and who can say it is not the least that is due to the 96 innocent people who died in April 1989?
Probably not Meredydd Hughes, head of the police force in which not one member has been required to atone in any way other than vapid, non-incriminating regret, for the command inexperience and incompetence which turned a football ground into a killing field. He urges us to wait patiently for the outcome of the Hillsborough Independent Panel.
He also explains that his decision two years ago to release police archives containing their version of affairs was provoked by the kind of issues raised by two other items of reader correspondence in The Independent over the last few days.
One was from the father of a victim who was sent from the temporary mortuary, where his dead son lay, on a search of neighbouring hospitals. The other was from someone who, having experienced with his alarmed wife and her friend unruly scenes outside the ground, and some rocking of the bus in which they sat, wondered whether "it is time the mob outside the ground took at least some of the blame for subsequent events."
If you happened to be at Hillsborough that evil day, if you saw how inevitable the tragedy became, if you saw groups of unengaged police officers talking among themselves as behind them a fearful crush built at the gates of the Leppings Lane entrance, if you had been told, as matter of unremarkable fact, that the only safe way to enter the ground was to walk around to the other end, and if you eventually sat down overwhelmed by the powerless conviction that people were certain to die, this last distortion of reality is a freshly revived horror.
This is especially so if you were able to walk on to the field and see the desperate, untutored rescue attempts of those who would later be accused of stealing from and urinating on the dead.
No one has ever said that there wasn't some rough behaviour by some Liverpool fans – but then no one who was there, and had eyes unveiled by vested interest, has ever begun to believe that the tragedy would not have been averted if those entrusted with the care of the people had done their jobs properly.
That, when you get right down to it, is the central conclusion of the Taylor report, which also noted that the end of Hillsborough where the tragedy occurred did not carry a safety certificate for the very good reason that it was so evidently a death trap waiting to be sprung.
One of the phrases you hear most often is that, with the enforcement of safety recommendations made by Lord Taylor, "no useful purpose" would be served by the most probing of inquiries.
A similar argument is advanced for the Cabinet Office appeal against public revelation of reports presented to the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, correspondence between her office and that of Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd, and the minutes of the meetings she attended.
There is, though, a useful purpose. It is one of a proper accounting of an affair that goes to the very heart of social responsibility. Certainly, it was guaranteed to shatter a belief in decency not only in the relatives and friends of the victims but anyone who was there to witness it and who consequently did not have to rely on the poisonously confected versions that should still shame all those who inspired them and bought them and prosecuted them as if they held any semblance of the truth.
Mrs Thatcher arrived at Hillsborough the following morning, bearing flowers and platitudes and, yes, it is right that we know, the reality that may or not have been the basis of her public pronouncements.
The chief constable also said: "I strongly urge commentators to await the work of the Hillsborough Independent Panel. Under the leadership of Bishop James of Liverpool, I am confident it will set the documents in a perspective that is helpful to understanding events, and in a manner that respects the victims."
This is not a matter of commentary but witness. If it is evident enough, you do not interpret what is truth and what is a lie. You see it and you know it, in your mind and in your guts, and if the consequences were as grave as they were at Hillsborough it is going to take a lot longer than 22 years to forget.
If you want someone to explain a scripture or an aspect of moral or canon law, no doubt the Bishop of Liverpool is the man. But not on Hillsborough, not if you were there, not if you saw how many people were so carelessly sent to their deaths – and especially not if you still have to wonder if anyone will ever have either the nerve or the conscience to say sorry.
James Lawton @'The Independent'
Richmond Fontaine – The High Country (2011 - Albumstream)
An operatically tragic tale is told in Richmond Fontaine’s tenth studio album, The High Country. More than a concept piece, the Portland, Oregon four-piece have crafted a song-novel, in which a gripping tale is spun with fully fleshed-out characters, changing scenes, snippets of radio and spoken word passages. It’s a spectacularly unique album.
Richmond Fontaine’s frontman, Willy Vlautin, is a published novelist whose 2006 debut, The Motel Life, has just been turned into a major motion directed by the Polsky Brothers and starring Dakota Fanning, Stephen Dorff and Kris Kristofferson. With Richmond Fontaine’s latest album, he’s combined that story-telling prowess with his songwriting gift to stunning effect.
Set in a rural logging community in Oregon, The High Country is a gothic love story between a mechanic and an auto parts store counter girl, whose secret love inspires an effort to escape the darkness of the world that surrounds them. It’s a world of drugs, violence, madness, loneliness and desperation set against a backdrop of endless roads and the remains of a forest brutalised by logging. In this story of light versus dark, Vlautin has woven a tale where screw-ups and freaks terrorise the lives of innocents.
From stark, romantic ballads and dialogue sequences to raw Northwest garage rock and cinematic songscapes, this album sees Richmond Fontaine’s musical trajectory soar far beyond their cowpunk roots, ably assisted by producer John Askew (The Dodos, Karl Blau).
Nothing to do with Diverse but well worth mentioning to you vinyl fans is that ahead of the album’s release, the track Lost In The Trees will be released as a single. Existing outside of the direct narrative of the album, it’s described by Vlautin as “a song about doing drugs in the middle of nowhere and getting lost,” though the 7” single package does come with a set of documents that flesh out the world of The High Country, including a bumper sticker from KSAW logging radio and a beer mat produced to locate the tale’s missing girl.
(diverserecords)
ALBUMSTREAM
Clegg praises free schools
Well why not have free hospitals and let people set up their own hospitals as well then? Anyone fancy a bit of surgery?
Monday, 5 September 2011
Wendy_Bacon Wendy Bacon
30 yr old ASIO files are public.That's great. But I'm not even allowed to know who spied on me 40 yrs ago. ASIO secrecy laws need reviewing
Retired police official charged in Politkovskaya murder
"Russian investigators are at last making some progress in Anna Politkovskaya's murder inquiry," said CPJ Deputy Director Robert Mahoney. "They should now build on this and broaden their investigation and apprehend all those behind this murder, including the masterminds."
The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, the agency tasked with solving Politkovskaya's murder, said an unidentified person contracted with Gaitukayev in July 2006 to kill Politkovskaya. Gaitukayev, the committee said in a statement, formed a gang that included his nephews--brothers Rustam, Dzhabrail, and Ibragim Makhmudov--along with Pavlyuchenkov and Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, a former police officer with the Moscow Directorate for Combating Organized Crime.
The agency said that Pavlyuchenkov--then head of surveillance at Moscow's Main Internal Affairs Directorate--ordered his subordinates to follow the journalist to identify her schedule and commuting routes, and then shared the information with the other members of the gang. The colonel also passed the murder weapon from Gaitukayev to the suspected gunman, Rustam Makhmudov, the agency said. Russian authorities arrested Pavlyuchenkov on August 24.
Gaitukayev is currently serving a lengthy jail term on unrelated charges of attempted murder, according to the BBC Russian service. Rustam Makhmudov was arrested on May 31 and indicted in early June. Ibragim and Dzhabrail Makhmudov--previously arrested in connection to the Politkovskaya murder--were acquitted by a jury in February 2009. Khadzhikurbanov, who was acquitted along with the Makhmudov brothers, was arrested in April 2009 on unrelated extortion charges and is currently serving a jail term, local press reports said.
Although the Investigative Committee announced that the probe into the Politkovskaya murder was ongoing, it did not say whether investigators plan to bring charges against Gaitukayev.
Politkovskaya, a special correspondent for the Moscow-based triweekly Novaya Gazeta, was well known for her investigative reports on human rights abuses in Chechnya--stories that led to multiple threats on her life. In her seven years covering the second Chechen war, the journalist's reporting repeatedly drew the wrath of Russian authorities. She was threatened, jailed, forced into exile, and poisoned during her career, CPJ research shows. On October 7, 2006, a man in a baseball cap shot her dead in the elevator of her Moscow apartment house.
@'CPJ'
Экс-милиционера обвинили в убийстве Анны Политковской
How Tony Blair was taken into the Murdoch family fold
It was a relationship that began in political controversy but progressed to a secret family union: Tony Blair, it was revealed , is godfather to Rupert Murdoch's nine-year-old daughter, Grace, the second youngest of his six children.
In a culmination of 15 years of political intimacy, the former Labour prime minister was present at the star-studded baptism of the child on the banks of the Jordan, at the spot where Jesus is said to have undergone the same ceremony, according to an article in Vogue magazine.
With the Murdochs and their children dressed in white – and present at the invitation of Queen Rania of Jordan – the event was photographed in Hello! magazine, complete with an ethereal front cover image of a smiling Murdoch in an open-necked shirt.
But no mention was made of Blair's participation, which was revealed only in a rare interview by Murdoch's wife, Wendi Deng, in a forthcoming edition of Vogue.
Although she has traditionally kept a low profile, Deng's interview comes after she catapulted herself into the public spotlight by leaping from a chair to lash out at a foam-pie thrower who attempted to target Murdoch during his questioning before the Commons culture, media and sport committee in July.
In the Vogue article the former Labour leader, is described as "one of Murdoch's closest friends".
Murdoch's company, News Corporation, confirmed the longstanding link between the two men, although it is not known when Murdoch asked Blair to act as a godparent and how far this predated the actual baptism.
Grace was baptised a few weeks before Easter of 2010, and therefore shortly before the last general election.
When the Jordanian baptism was originally reported by Hello!, it noted that actors Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman, both friends of the Murdochs, were godparents to Grace and her sister Chloe.
The involvement of Blair was admitted by Deng in the interview shortly before her husband flew to London to deal with the phone-hacking crisis in the wake of revelations that the News of the World had targeted the mobile phone of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.
Deng, who said she was not sleeping because of the stress of dealing with the phone-hacking affair, added in the interview: "Of course, as Rupert's wife, I think it's unfair on him to be going through this. I worry about him being alone. He has no PR people advising him. He tells me not to come but I'm flying to London for the hearing. I want to be with him."
In July it was reported that Blair rang Gordon Brown to ask him to tell his friend and ally, the Labour MP Tom Watson, to lay off attacking News Corporation over the phone-hacking issue. Brown is thought to have refused the request, although neither Blair nor Brown has confirmed such a conversation took place.
A spokesman for Blair last night declined to comment on the godfather link.
Blair's wooing of Murdoch dates to 1995, when the leader of the opposition provoked a political row by accepting an invitation to address a News Corporation conference on Hayman Island, Australia, in July of that year. Labour under Neil Kinnock had previously been demonised in Murdoch's Sun, to the point where some believed the tabloid's opposition had cost the party the 1992 election.
When Blair opted to attend, he justified the decision to his spokesman, Alastair Campbell, that "not to go was to say carry on and do your worst, and we knew their worst was very bad indeed," according to his memoirs. "It seems obvious," he added in his book, A Journey. "The country's most powerful newspaper proprietor, whose publications have hitherto been rancorous in their opposition to the Labour party, invites us into the lion's den. You go, don't you?" Blair also noted that Paul Keating, then Australia PM, felt Murdoch was "a bastard, but one you could deal with".
The would-be PM's performance at the News Corp event was seen as a clear sign that Labour was becoming electable – and marked the beginning of a long, close friendship between the two men.
Labour benefited from the loyal support of Murdoch newspapers, with the Sun switching from Conservative to Labour in the run-up to the 1997 election, and the Times dropping the Conservatives in 1997 and endorsing Labour in 2001. Meanwhile, Labour placed few restrictions on the operation of either News Corp's newspapers or BSkyB, in which News Corp owned a 39.1% stake, during its time in office.
Support from the Murdoch titles intensified at the time of the Iraq war, and Murdoch and Blair were in close contact through Blair's premiership, speaking, for example, on the phone three times in the nine days before the Iraq war. Information released by No 10 under freedom of information rules also showed the pair spoke on the day the Hutton report into the death of Dr David Kelly was published.
By the end of his premiership, Blair wrote of Murdoch in his memoirs that he "came to have a grudging respect and even a liking for him". He added: "He was hard, no doubt. He was rightwing. I did not share or like his attitudes on Europe, social policy or on issues like gay rights, but there were two points of connection: he was an outsider and he had balls."
Dan Sabbagh @'The Guardian'
Looks like Cablegate2 has been out in the wild since 9 June 2010
See xyz-magnets.txt
HERE
And as you can see from the above the hidden file was being mentioned in chatter last December
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