Bulldog Breed: Made In England 1969
16 minutes ago
Tuesday 7 September 2010
What the officer and the minister said about hacking ... and what they didn't
Asked if there would be another investigation: "We have always said that if any new material, new evidence, was produced, we would consider it."
This precisely misses the point, which is that since 2006, Scotland Yard has been sitting on a mass of evidence which it has not investigated and not disclosed. It needs no new evidence to reopen an inquiry which was never completed in the first place.
Asked if the only reporter he talked to at the News of the World about the hacking allegations was the royal correspondent: "No. That is not the case."
This looks misleading. All of the available information confirms that Scotland Yard failed to interview any reporter or editor or manager from the News of the World other than the royal correspondent, Clive Goodman. And that includes failing to interview reporters who were explicitly identified in evidence as having handled intercepted voicemail messages.
Asked if the Met had talked to Sean Hoare, the former News of the World reporter who has said that Andy Coulson was aware of widespread hacking at the tabloid during the original investigation: "This is the first time we have heard of Mr Hoare or anything he's had to say. He wasn't part of the inquiry … We are surprised that the New York Times did not avail us of this information earlier than they did."
Hoare is one of a dozen reporters who spoke to the New York Times about phone hacking under Andy Coulson. A dozen have also spoken to the Guardian. It is not clear why Scotland Yard detectives would need American reporters to introduce them to journalists in London. As stated above, they have chosen not to approach any serving or former reporters other than Clive Goodman.
Asked why the Met had not told people that their phones were targeted despite the fact that a police memo suggested that a "vast number" of mobile numbers had been hacked or potentially hacked: "I think there is a misunderstanding here, that just because your name features in a private investigator's files, that your phone has been hacked."
This misrepresents the memo, disclosed by the Guardian, in which, during the original inquiry, the Metropolitan Police told the Crown Prosecution Service unequivocally: "A vast number of unique voicemail numbers belonging to high-profile individuals (politicians, celebrities) have been identified as being accessed without authority."
It also fails to reflect the underlying failure by police to stick to their agreement with the director of public prosecutions to approach and warn "all potential victims". They warned a small number during the original inquiry, and a small number more after the Guardian revived the story last July. The mass of those whose names and/or personal details showed up in the police investigation have never been told.
Asked if John Prescott's phone was hacked: "I believe that there is no evidence that his phone was hacked. I made that very clear on a number of occasions."
This misses the point. Scotland Yard has no evidence on this matter, because it failed to investigate it. In August 2006, it seized material which showed that four months earlier, the deputy prime minister had been targeted by a man who specialised in intercepting voicemail. They could have warned Prescott and asked if he had noticed interference with his messages. They didn't. They could have gone to his mobile phone company for data that would have identified any caller who had attempted to access Prescott's voicemail. They didn't. That data is held for only 12 months, and has now been destroyed.
Statements by Theresa May
"That investigation has already been reviewed by the Metropolitan Police."
This is misleading. On the morning of 9 July last year, when the Guardian published its first major story on the affair, the Metropolitan commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, asked John Yates "to establish the facts". Less than 12 hours later, Yates announced that there was no basis for reopening the inquiry. Yates himself has repeatedly denied that what he conducted was a review.
"The Crown Prosecution Service had full access to all the evidence gathered."
The Guardian discovered that Scotland Yard failed to pass the Crown Prosecution Service an email, which they had found in Glenn Mulcaire's property, and which clearly identified two News of the World reporters handling voicemail that had been intercepted from the phone of Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association.
Scotland Yard has dismissed this accusation by insisting that the barrister who presented the case for the CPS "had access to all the material". What it does not say is that it took its own officers three months to go through it all; and moreover, the barrister himself has said that he does not remember seeing the crucial email.
"The police have made clear that during the investigation, there was early and regular consultation with the CPS, so that the lines of inquiry followed were likely to produce the best evidence."
That is not the story told by paperwork from the CPS, which shows the police persuading prosecutors to "ring-fence" evidence in order to conceal the identities of "sensitive" victims of the hacking.
"At the time the investigation took place, the Metropolitan Police made it clear that those who they believed had been intercepted were contacted by members of the Metropolitan Police."
This is incorrect. The police failed, for example, to contact Taylor's legal adviser, even though they had transcripts of voicemail taken from her phone; or Coulson himself, who had been hacked by his own private investigator, and in relation to whom the evidence was sufficiently clear that Scotland Yard contacted him within 24 hours of the story being revived last year. Scotland Yard still refuses to say how many it warned in 2006/7, how many it warned after the Guardian story, and how many others remain unwarned.
Nick Davies @'The Guardian'
♪♫ Pel Mel - No Word From China
While Bob is off on to Europe on his honeymoon with Carmen, Chuck has unearthed this wonderful band (who I didn't know of until now.)
You can download a collection of some of their singles at 'That Striped Sunlight Sound'
Alastair Campbell says:
campbellclaret ; Hope MPs don't confuse wood and trees in phonehacking. Coulson is trees. Wood is media culture. Cops part of the forest
Monday 6 September 2010
No 10 aide Andy Coulson denies hacking claims
Former News of the World reporter Sean Hoare has alleged former editor Mr Coulson asked him to hack into phones, a claim Mr Coulson denies.
The Met said new material had emerged that would be considered by officers.
Shadow Home Secretary Alan Johnson has requested an urgent question in the House of Commons over the issue.
A spokesman for Mr Coulson said: "Andy Coulson has today told the Metropolitan Police that he is happy to voluntarily meet them following allegations made by Sean Hoare.
"Mr Coulson emphatically denies these allegations. He has, however, offered to talk to officers if the need arises and would welcome the opportunity to give his view on Mr Hoare's claims."
The News of the World's royal editor, Clive Goodman, was jailed for conspiracy to access phone messages in 2007, along with private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, but the paper insists it was an isolated case.
While critical of the conduct of the News of the World's journalists, the House of Commons Culture and Media Committee found no evidence that Mr Coulson either approved phone-hacking by his paper, or was aware it was taking place.
In 2009, the Metropolitan Police chose not to launch an investigation following the Guardian's claims that News of the World journalists were involved in widespread phone hacking of several thousand celebrities, sports stars and politicians.
Mr Coulson came under fresh pressure last week after former journalists told the New York Times that the practice of phone hacking was far more extensive than the newspaper acknowledged at the time.
In light of the new information, Met Police Assistant Commissioner John Yates told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We've always said that if any new material or new evidence was produced then we would consider it.
"We've heard what Mr Hoare's had to say, we've been in touch with the New York Times for many months prior to the publication of the article, seeking any new material or new evidence that they had. They didn't produce any until they published this with Mr Hoare.
"It is new and we'll be considering it, and consulting with the Crown Prosecution Service before we do."
Mr Johnson will try to ask Home Secretary Theresa May in the Commons to explain what she intended to do in light of accusations that current members of the House may have had their phones tapped.
On Sunday she said there were no grounds for a public inquiry.
Mr Johnson said he wanted to know whether the practice was widespread at the News of the World, and whether every victim had been properly informed that they might have been hacked.
"I feel that as the home secretary last year, I was meticulous about not getting into the political ramifications of this given Andy Coulson's position with the then leader of the opposition, and that this should be based on evidence that came forward," he said.
"There's a whole host of evidence now that needs to be investigated and so I feel that is a job that needs to be completed. I'll be asking the current home secretary about that."
The Speaker has granted an urgent question from MP Tom Watson, which the home secretary will respond to.
Culture committee chairman John Whittingdale told the BBC he was against MPs reopening their inquiry into the claims.
He said the committee's previous investigation was as detailed as it could be at the time and it stood by its conclusions.
Click to play
Home Affairs Select Committee chairman Keith Vaz said Mr Yates would be asked about the latest developments in the inquiry when he appears before it on another matter on Tuesday.
The prime minister's spokesman said David Cameron had full confidence in Mr Coulson, who continues to do his job.
The spokesman said: "We have a number of stories in the newspapers. These allegations have been denied."
As far as the prime minister was concerned nothing had changed said the spokesman, adding: "These matters have been gone over many times in the past."
Mr Hoare told the New York Times he was fired from the News of the World during a period when he was struggling with drink and drugs.
The News of the World has rejected "absolutely any suggestion there was a widespread culture of wrongdoing" at the newspaper.
New Book Concludes - Chernobyl death toll: 985,000, mostly from cancer
This past April 26th marked the 24th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear plant accident. It came as the nuclear industry and pro-nuclear government officials in the United States and other nations were trying to "revive" nuclear power. And it followed the publication of a book, the most comprehensive study ever made, on the impacts of the Chernobyl disaster.
Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment was published by the New York Academy of Sciences.
It is authored by three noted scientists:
Russian biologist Dr. Alexey Yablokov, former environmental advisor to the Russian president;
Dr. Alexey Nesterenko, a biologist and ecologist in Belarus; and
Dr.Vassili Nesterenko, a physicist and at the time of the accident director of the Institute of Nuclear Energy of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus.
Its editor is Dr. Janette Sherman, a physician and toxicologist long involved in studying the health impacts of radioactivity.
The book is solidly based -- on health data, radiological surveys and scientific reports -- some 5,000 in all.
It concludes that based on records now available, some 985,000 people died, mainly of cancer, as a result of the Chernobyl accident. That is between when the accident occurred in 1986 and 2004. More deaths, it projects, will follow.
The book explodes the claim of the International Atomic Energy Agency-- still on its website that the expected death toll from the Chernobyl accident will be 4,000. The IAEA, the new book shows, is under-estimating, to the extreme, the casualties of Chernobyl.
Alice Slater, representative in New York of the Nuclear Age Peace
Foundation, comments: "The tragic news uncovered by the comprehensive
new research that almost one million people died in the toxic aftermath of Chernobyl should be a wake-up call to people all over the world to petition their governments to put a halt to the current industry-driven
"nuclear renaissance.' Aided by a corrupt IAEA, the world has been subjected to a massive cover-up and deception about the true damages caused by Chernobyl."
Further worsening the situation, she said, has been "the collusive agreement between the IAEA and the World Health Organization in which the WHO is precluded from publishing any research on radiation effects without consultation with the IAEA." WHO, the public health arm of the UN, has supported the IAEA's claim that 4,000 will die as a result of the accident.
"How fortunate," said Ms. Slater, "that independent scientists have now revealed the horrific costs of the Chernobyl accident."
The book also scores the position of the IAEA, set up through the UN in 1957 "to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy," and its 1959 agreement with WHO. There is a "need to change," it says, the IAEA-WHO pact. It has muzzled the WHO, providing for the "hiding" from the "public of any information "unwanted" by the nuclear industry.
"An important lesson from the Chernobyl experience is that experts and organizations tied to the nuclear industry have dismissed and ignored the consequences of the catastrophe," it states.
The book details the spread of radioactive poisons following the explosion of Unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear plant on April 26, 1986. These major releases only ended when the fire at the reactor was brought under control in mid-May. Emitted were "hundreds of millions of curies, a quantity hundreds of times larger than the fallout from the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki." The most extensive fall-out occurred in regions closest to the plant--in the Ukraine (the reactor was 60 miles from Kiev in Ukraine), Belarus and Russia.
However, there was fallout all over the world as the winds kept changing direction "so the radioactive emissions" covered an enormous territory."
The radioactive poisons sent billowing from the plant into the air included Cesium-137, Plutonium, Iodine-131 and Strontium-90.
There is a breakdown by country, highlighted by maps, of where the radionuclides fell out. Beyond Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, the countries included Bulgaria, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The radiological measurements show that some 10% of Chernobyl poisons "fell on Asia"Huge areas" of eastern Turkey and central China "were highly contaminated," reports the book. Northwestern Japan was impacted, too.
Northern Africa was hit with "more than 5% of all Chernobyl releases."
The finding of Cesium-137 and both Plutonium-239 and Plutonium-240 "in accumulated Nile River sediment is evidence of significant Chernobyl contamination," it states.
"Areas of North America were contaminated from the first, most powerful explosion, which lifted a cloud of radionuclides to a height of more than 10 km. Some 1% of all Chernobyl nuclides," says the book, "fell on North America."
The consequences on public health are extensively analyzed. Medical records involving children--the young, their cells more rapidly multiplying, are especially affected by radioactivity--are considered. Before the accident, more than 80% of the children in the territories of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia extensively contaminated by Chernobyl "were healthy," the book reports, based on health data. But "today fewer than 20% are well."
There is an examination of genetic impacts with records reflecting an increase in "chromosomal aberrations" wherever there was fallout.
This will continue through the "children of irradiated parents for as many as seven generations." So "the genetic consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe will impact hundreds of millions of people."As to deaths, the list of countries and consequences begins with Belarus. "For the period 1900-2000 cancer mortality in Belarus increased 40%," it states, again based on medical data and illuminated by tables in the book. "The increase was a maximum in the most highly contaminated Gomel Province and lower in the less contaminated Brest and Mogilev provinces." They include childhood cancers, thyroid cancer, leukemia and other cancers.
Considering health data of people in all nations impacted by the fallout, the "overall mortality for the period from April 1986 to the end of 2004 from the Chernobyl catastrophe was estimated as 985,000 additional deaths."
Further, "the concentrations" of some of the poisons, because they have radioactive half-lives ranging from 20,000 to 200,000 years, "will remain practically the same virtually forever."
The book also examines the impact on plants and animals. "Immediately after the catastrophe, the frequency of plant mutations in the contaminated territories increased sharply."
There are photographs of some of these plant mutations. "Chernobyl irradiation has caused many structural anomalies and tumorlike changes in many plant species and has led to genetic disorders, sometimes continuing for many years," it says. "Twenty-three years after the catastrophe it is still too early to know if the whole spectrum of plant radiogenic changes has been discerned. We are far from knowing all of the consequences for flora resulting from the catastrophe."
As to animals, the book notes "serious increases in morbidity and mortality that bear striking resemblance to changes in the public health of humans--increasing tumor rates, immunodeficiencies, and decreasing life expectancy."
In one study it is found that "survival rates of barn swallows in the most contaminated sites near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant are close to zero. In areas of moderate contamination, annual survival is less than 25%." Research is cited into ghastly abnormalities in barn swallows that do hatch: "two heads, two tails."
"In 1986," the book states, "the level of irradiation in plants and animals in Western Europe, North America, the Arctic, and eastern Asia were sometimes hundreds and even thousands of times above acceptable norms."
In its final chapter, the book declares that the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear plant "was the worst technogenic accident in history." And it examines "obstacles" to the reporting of the true consequences of Chernobyl with a special focus on "organizations associated with the nuclear industry" that "protect the industry first--not the public." Here, the IAEA and WHO are charged.
The book ends by quoting U.S. President John F. Kennedy's call in 1963 for an end of atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons."The Chernobyl catastrophe," it declares, "demonstrates that the nuclear industry's willingness to risk the health of humanity and our environment with nuclear power plants will result, not only theoretically, but practically, in the same level of hazard as nuclear weapons."
Dr. Sherman, speaking of the IAEA's and WHO's dealing with the impacts of Chernobyl, commented: "It's like Dracula guarding the blood bank." The 1959 agreement under which WHO "is not to be independent of the IAEA" but must clear any information it obtains on issues involving radioactivity with the IAEA has put "the two in bed together."
Of her reflections on 14 months editing the book, she said: "Every single system that was studied -- whether human or wolves or livestock or fish or trees or mushrooms or bacteria -- all were changed, some of them irreversibly. The scope of the damage is stunning."
In his foreword, Dr. Dimitro Grodzinsky, chairman of the Ukranian National Commission on Radiation Protection, writes about how "apologists of nuclear power" sought to hide the real impacts of the Chernobyl disaster from the time when the accident occurred. The book "provides the largest and most complete collection of data concerning the negative consequences of Chernobyl on the health of people and the environment...The main conclusion of the book is that it is impossible and wrong "to forget Chernobyl.”
In the record of Big Lies, the claim of the IAEA-WHO that "only" 4,000 people will die as a result of the Chernobyl catastrophe is among the biggest. The Chernobyl accident is, as the new book documents, an ongoing global catastrophe.
And it is a clear call for no new nuclear power plants to be built and for the closing of the dangerous atomic machines now running -- and a switch to safe energy technologies, now available, led by solar and wind energy, that will not leave nearly a million people dead from one disaster.
Karl Grossman @'Global Research'
Media Matters Stakes Claim As High-Volume Watchdog
The "explosive new allegations" against the Obama Justice Department that hit the airwaves in June were in fact "completely unsubstantiated" assertions that were not broadcast so much as "trumpeted" by Fox News. That's the world according to Media Matters for America, the rapid-response liberal cadre of "misinformation" hunters that for six years has been raising its visibility -- while also raising the volume of invective that flavors much of today's press criticism.
The Fox story, elicited by daytime America Live interviewer Megyn Kelly on June 30, was a triple bank shot of politics, law, and putative video drama. It was built around charges by conservative operative J. Christian Adams, a former Bush administration Justice Department lawyer. He argued that his successors in the Civil Rights Division were reverse racists because they refused to prosecute a voter-intimidation case based on film clips of New Black Panther Party members standing menacingly in front of a Philadelphia polling station on Election Day 2008.
Readers of Mediamatters.org learned that the charges were based on "hearsay" from a Republican activist with a history of bashing President Obama and working as a poll watcher in 2004 for President Bush. A hyperlink sent readers to Adams's June 28 Pajamas Media post, in which he deplored "the profound hostility" in the Civil Rights Division "toward a race-neutral enforcement of civil-rights laws."
Media Matters then tracked the story as it was picked up on July 7 by CNN -- criticizing the cable network for not mentioning some conservative criticism of the Right's sudden fixation on the Black Panthers -- and by The New York Times. (The Washington Post was tardy, as ombudsman Andrew Alexander later complained in his column, waiting until July 15 to cover the Adams dustup.)
Thus did the digital Left's fastest-growing watchdog group, which claims 5 million visitors a month to its website, intercept a story launched by the conservative "noise machine" and seek to steer it toward the friendlier shoals of the mainstream press.
The Media Matters view of Washington soared in January, when the nonprofit's nearly 70-member staff moved into the panoramic, glassed-in sixth floor of a new building a few blocks from the Capitol, on Massachusetts Avenue NW. Its "more collaborative" work environment features seven rows of newsroom-style desks; researchers sit in front of their computer monitors beneath fluorescent lights and exposed ceiling ducts.
"We hire former journalists, editors, Ph.Ds, political researchers, and ex-TV producers," Ari Rabin-Havt, the group's vice president for research and communications, explains. "We look for more than experience -- certain personality types who pay attention to detail."...
Continue reading
Charles S. Clark @'National Journal Magazine'
The Fox story, elicited by daytime America Live interviewer Megyn Kelly on June 30, was a triple bank shot of politics, law, and putative video drama. It was built around charges by conservative operative J. Christian Adams, a former Bush administration Justice Department lawyer. He argued that his successors in the Civil Rights Division were reverse racists because they refused to prosecute a voter-intimidation case based on film clips of New Black Panther Party members standing menacingly in front of a Philadelphia polling station on Election Day 2008.
Readers of Mediamatters.org learned that the charges were based on "hearsay" from a Republican activist with a history of bashing President Obama and working as a poll watcher in 2004 for President Bush. A hyperlink sent readers to Adams's June 28 Pajamas Media post, in which he deplored "the profound hostility" in the Civil Rights Division "toward a race-neutral enforcement of civil-rights laws."
Media Matters then tracked the story as it was picked up on July 7 by CNN -- criticizing the cable network for not mentioning some conservative criticism of the Right's sudden fixation on the Black Panthers -- and by The New York Times. (The Washington Post was tardy, as ombudsman Andrew Alexander later complained in his column, waiting until July 15 to cover the Adams dustup.)
Thus did the digital Left's fastest-growing watchdog group, which claims 5 million visitors a month to its website, intercept a story launched by the conservative "noise machine" and seek to steer it toward the friendlier shoals of the mainstream press.
The Media Matters view of Washington soared in January, when the nonprofit's nearly 70-member staff moved into the panoramic, glassed-in sixth floor of a new building a few blocks from the Capitol, on Massachusetts Avenue NW. Its "more collaborative" work environment features seven rows of newsroom-style desks; researchers sit in front of their computer monitors beneath fluorescent lights and exposed ceiling ducts.
"We hire former journalists, editors, Ph.Ds, political researchers, and ex-TV producers," Ari Rabin-Havt, the group's vice president for research and communications, explains. "We look for more than experience -- certain personality types who pay attention to detail."...
Continue reading
Charles S. Clark @'National Journal Magazine'
Fade out...
Eric Emerson (who insisted on the removal of his face from the VU's debut album) and Nico.
Photograph by Anton Perich/Courtesy of Steven Kasher Gallery, NYC.
They All Hung Out at Max’s
Like the Ouroboros, the mythical serpent swallowing its own tail in an eternal circle of self-consumption, the cultural imagination of New York continues to feed on its chattier, noisier, messier, more creatively jostling past, the present being too priced out and tamped down. The Algonquin Round Table, the Stork Club, Cedar Tavern, Studio 54—each has been given its permanent wing in the memory museum, and now it’s Max’s Kansas City’s retrospective moment. A restaurant and nightclub on Park Avenue South whose name had little to do with Max and even less to do with Kansas City, this magnet for artists, actors, musicians, poets, and fame moochers was opened in 1965 by Mickey Ruskin, one of those beneficent fairy god-fathers with a light, guiding hand, who seeded a “scene” and then let it flower until a downtown hangout became a star-strewn house party. The mottled glory that was Max’s is a two-part saga. From the mid-60s to the early 70s, it was thronged with painters, sculptors, and Zeus-browed critics, its in-crowd back room becoming the banquet spot for Andy Warhol and his apostles from the Factory. (Warhol’s flagship band, the Velvet Underground, recorded a live album there.) This gave way to the thundering hooves of glitter-rockers such as the New York Dolls in their platform wedges and lipstick pouts, bringing down the curtain on Act I. Max’s closed in 1974 and reopened in 1975 under new management and became the North Pole of the punk/New Wave movement to CBGB’s southern pole on the Bowery. Complementing Max’s two-part story (the club closed in 1981) is a two-pronged commemorative celebration this fall of its legacy: a lavishly illustrated coffee-table keepsake published by Abrams Image (with words by, among others, Lou Reed and Danny Fields) and a corresponding art exhibition at New York’s Steven Kasher Gallery featuring vintage photos, paintings, and big-ass sculptures. Prepare to get Max-ed out!
James Wolcott @'Vanity Fair'
Punk’d, Iraqi-Style, at a Checkpoint
An Iraqi reality television program broadcast during Ramadan has been planting fake bombs in celebrities’ cars, having an Iraqi army checkpoint find them and terrifying the celebrities into thinking that they are headed for maximum security prison.
The show “Put Him in [Camp] Bucca” has drawn numerous protests but has stayed on air throughout the fasting month, broadcasting its “stings” on well-known Iraqi personalities.
Al-Baghdadia “Put Him in Bucca”
All of them were ensnared by being invited to the headquarters of the private television station Al Baghdadia to be interviewed, but en route to the station a fake bomb would be planted in their car while they were being searched by Iraqi soldiers, who were in on the deception.
The unwitting celebrities are then secretly filmed, Candid-Camera-style, as they reacted with shock, disbelief and anger as fake checkpoint guards shout abuse at them: “Why do you want to blow us up?” “You are a terrorist.” “How much did they pay you to do it? You will be executed.”
The celebrities protest that they know nothing about the supposed bomb, that they are innocent and honorable Iraqi citizens, only to be told, “We have caught you red-handed, with the bomb in your car.”
How much of it is staged with the knowledge of the actors is unclear from the footage, which has been broadcast daily this month, with excerpts, reactions and comments on the channel’s Web site.
One televised exchange ran:
Soldier : “Which group you are working for?”
Television Host: “Al Qaeda for sure.”
Guest: “I am an actor. What are you saying? Is this a game or what?”
Soldier: “This a military checkpoint. What do you think we are playing here? You have got a bomb in your car.”
Television Host: “Why are you doing this? Why are you putting me in such trouble?”
Guest: “I am a family man. I have two kids. How could I do this to my family? I am telling you the truth, it’s not me who planted the bomb.”
Nearly every Iraqi newspaper carried complaints about the idea of the show, with many well-known figures asking for it to be canceled. Some said it was simply too close to Iraq’s daily reality.
The name of the show refers to Camp Bucca, the large American-built high-security prison near the Kuwaiti border in southern Iraq that held thousands of Iraqi detainees and was closed in September 2009.
Kifah al-Majeed, an official with the Baghdad Operations Command, which runs the Iraqi security forces in the capital, said: “Al-Baghdadia did it in an official way. They sent us a document asking us for permission to do this television show. We agreed, so al-Baghdadia did nothing wrong.”
The producers of the show said that the show was entertainment, that it made people laugh and that no one had gotten hurt. The celebrities, they said, agreed for the episodes to be broadcast, and many were interviewed in the studio afterward.
Ali al-Khalidi, the show’s host, who appears on screen in many of the setups, said: “The show will continue until the end of Ramadan. Yes, there have been a lot of things said about it in the newspapers and on radio and television, but it will go on.”
Of the dozens of comments left on the Web site by viewers, most were negative. A sample taken on Friday included:
“Everyone knows that Iraq is living under unnatural circumstances on all sides, so why do you make a program that is based on fear, provocation and mocking, especially to Iraqis.”
“To al-Baghdadia channel, I hope that your channel does not dance on the wounds of the Iraqi people”.
“I am sure that showing such scary and frustrating programs is merely to bring a smile to the lips of the viewers. There are not many ways to bring such smiles other than what we have watched in this program.”
“The program is very nice, and the nicest thing is that the soldiers are acting in a very good and convincing way. It is obvious that the artist feels that he is in big trouble without a solution, so he would do anything to convince the soldiers that he is innocent.”
“When you want to bring a smile to someone’s lips, do not do that at the expense of other people. I want to ask, if one of the victims was sick with diabetes or blood pressure and had a heart attack, what would your reaction be then if a disaster took place? Would an apology be enough then?”
Pictures from Al-Baghdadia Web site
Yasir Ghazi @'NY Times'
Stigmatisation of problem-drug users
William S Burroughs II, the American Beat Generation author, published Junkie: Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict in 1953 about life dependent on heroin (some editions use Junky). Junk was a slang term for heroin, possibly from users being seen as the “junk of society”, an early use of a stigmatising phrase.
60 years on, stigmatising labels for drug users remain topical, according to a report last week by the UK Drug Policy Commission, Sinning and sinned against: the stigmatisation of problem drug users. The Commission used a definition of problem drug use as injecting drug use or long duration or regular use of opioids, cocaine, or amphetamines. The Commission rather stumbled with this definition, because it wants to see the drug as the problem not the user. Use of the powerful connecting hyphen would have solved their dilemma: problem-drug user. They excluded “recreational” drugs, such as alcohol, cannabis, and ecstasy, but acknowledged that users of those drugs carry different stigmatising labels.
“Stigmatisation matters”, says the Commission. “We feel stigma exquisitely because we are fundamentally social in our make-up.” They conclude that problem-drug users are so strongly stigmatised that their ability to escape addiction is compromised in treatment, housing, and employment. Because of such stigma, the Commission feels, problem-drug users find it hard to be seen as blameless, like those with mental illness or disability.
The vote-catching rhetoric of “war on drugs” or “tough on drugs” means politicians and policy makers are simply paying lip service to the compassionate “road to recovery” as a goal for society, says the Commission, which wants politicians and policy makers to think more carefully about such rhetoric. As a start, the Commission also calls for the public, health professionals, and particularly the media to be educated about the effects of stigmatising drug users. A good example was set by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in his support of Recovery Month.
Perhaps determined to not call a rose by any other name, Burroughs' second book was entitled Queer—he would probably have written wryly about today's concerns about stigmatising labels.
Dylan: Four One Hour Radio Docs Hosted by Patti Smith
A 4-disc collection released to radio in 2007 to promote the compilation simply titled Dylan
. The programs are hosted by the great Patti Smith, and feature interviews with the likes of Dylan cohorts Bob Neuwirth, Suze Rotolo, Dave Van Ronk, Roger McGuinn, and others; critics and historians such as Greil Marcus, Bill Flanagan, and Anthony DeCurtis; and musicians including John Hiatt, singer-songwriter Josh Ritter, and Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello.
(Thanx Stan!). The programs are hosted by the great Patti Smith, and feature interviews with the likes of Dylan cohorts Bob Neuwirth, Suze Rotolo, Dave Van Ronk, Roger McGuinn, and others; critics and historians such as Greil Marcus, Bill Flanagan, and Anthony DeCurtis; and musicians including John Hiatt, singer-songwriter Josh Ritter, and Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello. Sunday 5 September 2010
A basic need - Making fire with IKEA products
"The thought of people burning their furniture during the war so they could keep warm and cook formed the inspiration for FLAMMA. FLAMMA harks back to one of humanity’s basic needs: making fire. I thought it would be interesting to go into IKEA as if I was a primitive human being and make fire using products found there. The project also fits the back-to-basics image of IKEA and the Swedish lifestyle. IKEA does not, however, sell lighters or matches."
- Helmut Smits
via core77
Saturday 4 September 2010
Eric Schmidt - Don't Be Evil?
ConsumerWatchdog's final/complete version of their new "Don't Be Evil?" video
Don't bogart that meal, my friend!
Jonesing for some gourmet tri-tip and a solid buzz? Check out Cannabis Catering, a San Francisco-based outfit that specializes in marijuana cuisine. The brainchild of Chef Frederick Nesbitt, a California Culinary Academy-trained chef who has worked as personal chef for Jerry Rice and John Madden, Cannabis Catering offers four and five-course meals laced with ganja.
The idea for Cannabis Catering came to Nesbitt when he learned that his friend's diabetic mother had been diagnosed with cancer. "I would bring back edibles [from the dispensary], but they're so high in high-fructose corn syrup that she was high off sugar rather than being medicated," he says. So Nesbitt began experimenting with his own pot food--starting with mashed potatoes.
Now Nesbitt cooks an array of cannabis-laced delectables. A sample menu might include salad, lobster bisque, whiskey tri-tip with a demi-glazed sauce (containing marijuana tincture or ground-up hashish), and an infused Belgian chocolate fountain.
Each meal contains the equivalent of three to five pot cookies, but Nesbitt says he can customize the food depending on what customers want. "When you're eating a cookie, you're eating as much as you can in one portion. I'm spreading it out through a whole meal," he says. "The last thing I need is people freaking out on me."
The meals costs approximately $100 per person, but Nesbitt won't dish out his goods unless his patrons have proper documentation (read: a medical marijuana card). "I'm trying to just feed people," he says. "This is one little ingredient of what I'm doing."
(Ariel Schwartz - Fast Company)
via boing boing
Thursday 2 September 2010
Andy Coulson discussed phone hacking at News of the World, report claims
Coulson, who resigned as editor of the News of the World in January 2007 after its royal correspondent was jailed for intercepting voicemail messages, has always insisted that he had no knowledge of illegal activity when he edited the paper or at any time as a journalist. He told a Commons select committee last year: "I have never had any involvement in it at all."
The New York Times website published a trail to a story due to appear in its Sunday magazine. It made detailed allegations likely to bring intense new pressure on Coulson and the Metropolitan police force, which stands accused of favouring Rupert Murdoch's newspaper group by cutting short its investigation, withholding crucial evidence from prosecutors and failing to inform victims of the newspaper's crimes against them. Coulson declined to comment on the allegations. The News of the World and Scotland Yard have denied all the charges.
Coulson resigned after the imprisonment of his royal reporter, Clive Goodman, and a private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, for "hacking" into the voicemail messages of eight public figures. When the Guardian revealed last year that the scandal involved other journalists at the paper and numerous other victims, Coulson said he had nothing to add to earlier denials of involvement, and the Conservative leader stood by him. David Cameron said: "I believe in giving people a second chance."
The New York Times, which has had an investigative team at work on the story since March, is citing two former News of the World journalists who specifically claim that Coulson was directly aware of his reporters' use of illegal techniques.
An unnamed former editor is quoted as claiming that Coulson talked freely about illegal news-gathering techniques, including phone-hacking, and that he personally had been at "dozens, if not hundreds" of meetings with Coulson where the subject came up. "The editor added that when Coulson would ask where a story came from, editors would reply 'We've pulled the phone records' or 'I've listened to the phone messages'."
In addition, Sean Hoare, a former reporter who used to be a close friend of Coulson, is quoted as saying that when he worked with Coulson at the Sun, he personally played recordings of hacked voicemail messages for him and that later, when he worked for Coulson at the News of the World, he "continued to inform Coulson of his pursuits. Coulson 'actively encouraged me to do it', Hoare said".
Hoare, who was sacked from the paper at a time when he had drink and drug problems, says he personally listened to the voicemail messages of celebrities such as David and Victoria Beckham and that he has spoken out now because he believes it was unfair for Goodman to get all the blame.
Coulson told the Commons media committee last year that he had never even heard Mulcaire's name and that Goodman had been the only reporter involved: "I am absolutely sure that Clive's case was a very unfortunate rogue case."
The New York Times claims to have spoken to a dozen former News of the World reporters and editors who say that phone-hacking was "pervasive" in Coulson's newsroom. "Everyone knew," according to an unnamed senior reporter. "The office cat knew." Most former reporters are unnamed, but Sharon Marshall is named as having witnessed hacking when working under Coulson from 2002-04. "It was an industry-wide thing," she said.
The paper says that Coulson ran a highly competitive newsroom "with single-minded imperiousness". Former News of the World journalists claim that there was a "do whatever it takes" mentality and that reporters were told to "get the story, no matter what". "They described a frantic, sometimes degrading atmosphere in which some reporters openly pursued hacking or other improper tactics to satisfy demanding editors," according to the New York Times.
The paper gives a specific example of the involvement of an editorial executive: "Matt Driscoll, a former sports reporter, recalled chasing a story about the soccer star Rio Ferdinand. Ferdinand claimed he had inadvertently turned off his phone and missed a message alerting him to a drug test. Driscoll had hit a dead end, he said, when an editor showed up at his desk with the player's private phone records." Driscoll was later dismissed and awarded £800,000 by a tribunal, which found that he had been bullied by Coulson.
Bill Akass, managing editor of the News of the World, dismissed the New York Times claims as "unsubstantiated". He said: "We reject absolutely any suggestion or assertion that the activities of Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire, at the time of their arrest, were part of a culture of wrongdoing at the News of the World and were specifically sanctioned or accepted at a senior level in the newspaper."
The New York Times goes on to quote unnamed sources from the Met suggesting that its inquiry into the phone hacking was hampered by a desire to avoid upsetting Britain's biggest selling newspaper: "Several investigators said in interviews that Scotland Yard was reluctant to conduct a wider inquiry in part because of its close relationship with the News of the World."
After a raid on Goodman's desk in August 2006, according to the New York Times, "several detectives said they began feeling internal pressure. One senior investigator said he was approached by someone from the department's press office, who was waving his arms in the air, saying 'wait a minute, let's talk about this'."
The investigator, who has since left Scotland Yard, added that the press officer stressed the department's "long-term relationship with News International". The investigator recalled furiously responding: "There's illegality here, and we'll pursue it like we do any other case." Scotland Yard says that operational decisions are made by police, not by press officers.
Former journalists told the New York Times that when Scotland Yard raided Goodman's desk, two senior journalists "stuffed reams of documents into trash bags and hauled them away". Police did not interview any other reporter or editor apart from Goodman. The material seized from Goodman and Mulcaire included paperwork which potentially implicated three named journalists. None was interviewed and, as the Guardian disclosed last year, the police failed to pass key paperwork to the Crown Prosecution Service.
The New York Times quotes an unnamed former senior prosecutor who was "stunned to discover later that the police had not shared everything. 'I would have said we need to see how far this goes' and 'whether we have a serious problem of criminality on this news desk', said the former prosecutor."
When the case came to court, police identified eight victims of the hacking. However, the New York Times claims that the officer responsible for the inquiry, the then assistant commissioner Andy Hayman, had been shown a "target list" of names and numbers taken from Mulcaire's home which ran to eight or 10 pages and which "read like a British society directory".
The Met told prosecutors that it would approach all known victims, but failed to do so. One who was approached, the then Respect MP George Galloway, told the New York Times that police warned him that his voicemail had been intercepted but refused to tell him who was responsible.
Scotland Yard denies cutting short its inquiry or being influenced by its relationship with the News of the World. The Press Complaints Commission was criticised after two inquiries into the affair failed to find evidence of wrongdoing other than that originally presented by police.
After revelations in the Guardian, the Commons media select committee held a second inquiry into the affair last year. Its report expressed concern "at the readiness of all of those involved – News International, the police and the PCC – to leave Mr Goodman as the sole scapegoat without carrying out a full investigation".
Coulson said tonight: "I absolutely deny these allegations."
Nick Davies @'The Guardian'
More worrying is that the UK police rolled over for Murdoch!!!
The final resting place of Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky 09.01.2010
The ashes of poet Allen Ginsberg and his lover Peter Orlovsky were interned in Colorado on Sunday.
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