Met’s threats to Guardian are ‘direct attack on free press’, say lawyers
September 17, 2011 No Comment
Critics round on police for using Offical Secrets Act to try to force Guardian to reveal source of phone-hacking story Leading journalists and lawyers on Saturday accused Scotland Yard of launching “a direct attack on a free press” after it invoked the Official Secrets Act in an attempt to force journalists to reveal their sources. Lawyers acting for the Metropolitan Police will on Friday apply for an order under the 1989 act requiring the Guardian to hand over documents that could identify the source of information for several articles published as part of the newspaper’s investigation into phone hacking. The Society of Editors on Saturday joined the Index on Censorship in criticising the legal manoeuvre, while a leading QC suggested it could breach human rights laws. “Scotland Yard’s outrageous and unjustified attempt to force the Guardian to reveal its sources in its phone-hacking investigation is a direct attack on a free press,” said John Kampfner, chief executive of Index on Censorship. “This is a shocking move to intimidate the media using the Official Secrets Act, one of the state’s most draconian pieces of legislation.” Bob Satchwell, executive director of the Society of Editors, described the Met’s behaviour as “outrageous, pointless and baffling”. He said: “The Official Secrets Act is designed to protect national security, so there is no justification in this case. The law, and particularly the Human Rights Act, is supposed to protect journalists’ sources.” Sir Harold Evans, former editor of the Sunday Times and Times , branded the Met’s move “ridiculous”. Writing in today’s Observer, he says : “I cannot believe that the attorney general will let this case of uniformed bullying go forward” and claimed that “without the ability and determination of the press to protect sources many wrongs would go undetected and unpunished”. Evans told the Observer the Official Secrets Act was never intended for such use. “This is a cavalier abuse of an act intended to protect national security, not to cover up negligence and corruption, least of all to justify an assault on the very newspaper that exposed the original crime while the police, politicians and the press walked by.” John Cooper, a leading human rights lawyer and visiting professor at Cardiff University, echoed Evans’s concerns. “In my view this is a misuse of the 1989 act,” Cooper said. “Fundamentally the act was designed to prevent espionage. In extreme cases it can be used to prevent police officers tipping off criminals about police investigations or from selling their stories. In this instance none of this is suggested, and many believe what was done was in the public interest.” Cooper added: “The police action is very likely to conflict with article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects freedom of speech.” Scotland Yard yesterday defended its attempt to force the paper to reveal its confidential sources, claiming it was important to preserve the integrity of its high-profile investigation into phone hacking, Operation Weeting. “Operation Weeting is one of the MPS’s most high-profile and sensitive investigations, so of course we should take concerns of leaks seriously to ensure that public interest is protected by ensuring there is no further potential compromise,” the Met said in a statement. The police are said to be seeking the source of the Guardian ‘s report disclosing that the mobile phone of murdered teenager Milly Dowler had been hacked. The Met said it was not seeking to use the law “to prevent whistle blowing or investigative journalism that is in the public interest”. “We pay tribute to the Guardian ‘s unwavering determination to expose the hacking scandal and their challenge around the initial police response,” it said. “We also recognise the important public interest of whistle blowing and investigative reporting. However, neither is apparent in this case. This is an investigation into the alleged gratuitous release of information that is not in the public interest.” Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger strongly condemned the move as “vindictive and disproportionate”, and said the paper would resist it “to the utmost”. A Guardian reporter, Amelia Hill, has been interviewed under caution by Scotland Yard over the alleged leaks. A 51-year-old detective constable was arrested and bailed last month in connection with the investigation. Press freedom The Guardian Phone hacking Official Secrets Act Metropolitan police Police Newspapers & magazines National newspapers Newspapers Freedom of speech Jamie Doward guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …You may have thought it was gettin’ real in the Whole Foods parking lot, but just wait until you get inside, where the supermarket giant bombards you with manipulation that “primes” you to spend. From the fresh-cut flowers at the entrance suggesting freshness is everywhere, “without a shadow of doubt,…
Continue reading …Silvio Berlusconi wiretaps reveal boast of spending night with eight women
September 17, 2011 No Comment
Conversations show that Italian PM resented meetings with the Pope and world leaders interfering with his partying Magistrates investigating an alleged prostitution ring in Italy have published wiretaps in which Silvio Berlusconi boasts of spending the night with eight women and complains that meetings with Gordon Brown and the Pope are interfering with his partying. The wiretaps were released at the conclusion of an investigation into entrepreneur Gianpaolo Tarantini, who is accused of paying women to sleep with Berlusconi, 74, at his homes in 2008 and 2009. The Italian prime minister is not under investigation, although the wiretaps throw doubt on Berlusconi’s claims that he has never paid for sex. “They are all well provided for,” Berlusconi tells Tarantini of the girls passing through his Rome residence in one of the thousands of recorded conversations released, which filled Italian newspapers on Saturday. In another conversation, a woman named Vanessa Di Meglio sends a text from Berlusconi’s residence to Tarantini at 5.52am asking “Who pays? Do we ask him or you?” Tarantini’s supply of women first made the headlines thanks to the revelations of prostitute Patrizia D’Addario, who claimed Tarantini recruited her to have sex with Berlusconi. A second scandal has since erupted over Berlusconi’s subsequent parties at his villa near Milan, with the prime minister on trial accused of paying underage Moroccan dancer Karima El Mahroug for sex. The newly published wiretaps give startling insight into Berlusconi’s sexual appetites. “Last night I had a queue outside the door of the bedroom… There were 11… I only did eight because I could not do it anymore,” Berlusconi told Tarantini in 2009. “Listen, all the beds are full here… this lot won’t go home, even at gunpoint.” Berlusconi, who boasted to one TV showgirl that he was only “prime minister in my spare time”, told Tarantini in September 2008 that he needed to reduce the flow of women since he had a “terrible week” ahead seeing Pope Benedict, Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel and Gordon Brown. Berlusconi has long insisted that his private parties are informal but elegant affairs, that extend only as far as joke telling and songs, but is revealed on the tapes as putting pressure on Tarantini and his associates to conjure up beautiful female guests. He is heard complaining he will need a caravan to pick up all the girls, while in another conversation Tarantini says to a colleague: “Find a whore, please.” Tarantini, an entrepreneur from Bari who sold prosthetic limbs before meeting Berlusconi in 2008, quickly became a confidant of the prime minister. “Listen Gianpaolo, now we need at most two each,” said Berlusconi in one call. “Because now I want that you have yours, otherwise I will always feel I am in your debt. Then we can trade. After all, the pussy needs to go around.” Berlusconi also sought to impress his female guests by inviting senior managers from his cinema production company and from state TV network RAI. “These are people who can get jobs for whoever they want,” he told Tarantini. “Therefore the girls will get the idea that they are in front of men who can decide their destiny.” Tarantini is suspected of procuring women for other top officials, including a magistrate and a manager at state controlled defence group Finmeccanica. In a separate probe, he has also been arrested on suspicion of seeking to blackmail Berlusconi through an intermediary in return for keeping the lid on details of his procurement of women. Berlusconi has claimed the money he paid out, believed to be more than ¤500,000, was merely financial assistance. In a letter published in the newspaper Il Foglio , Berlusconi hit back at the latest wiretaps, claiming: “My private life is not a crime, my lifestyle may or may not please, it is personal, reserved and irreproachable.” Opposition leaders meanwhile demanded an inquiry into suggestions in the wiretaps that Berlusconi used government aircraft to ferry prostitutes to his parties. “Italy, with its grave problems cannot allow itself an executive which governs in its spare time. The time for words is over, Berlusconi must go to the Italian president and resign,” said Davide Zoggia, an official for the opposition Democratic Party. Already in trouble in the polls after pushing through a painful austerity budget, Berlusconi’s political support took another blow over the weekend as his crucial partner Umberto Bossi, head of the Northern League party, warned that the administration would not make it to the end of its mandate in 2013. Encouraging support, however, came from Russia, where Vladimir Putin said: “They criticise [Berlusconi] because they are jealous.” Silvio Berlusconi Italy Europe Tom Kington guardian.co.uk
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President Abbas takes case for statehood to the Security Council as negotiators say US response was ‘the final straw’ Palestinian negotiators accused Washington of failing to offer measures that might have headed off a looming diplomatic crisis over UN recognition of a Palestinian state. A senior official said US proposals had been the “final straw” that led to the decision to go to the UN. Nabil Shaath, a member of the team headed by President Mahmoud Abbas that left for New York said he “gulped” when he saw the proposal presented by the US team of David Hale and Dennis Ross. “This was the statement supposed to persuade Abu Mazen [Abbas] not to go?” he said. There was no mention of Israeli settlements, of the future of Jerusalem or of refugees. It also included the demand that the Palestinians recognise Israel as a “Jewish state”. The US, he added, was “not a neutral observer, but a strategic ally of Israel”. His claim came as British officials said they were still undecided on how they would vote either at the UN Security Council later this week or in the subsequent vote in the UN’s General Assembly that is widely expected to grant Palestine enhanced status at the UN. Abbas will lodge the formal application for Palestine to be admitted to the UN as an independent state based on the borders of 4 June 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital, in the coming week. The Palestinians’ resolve to resist intense pressure from the US, the European Union and Israel has set it on a collision course whose repercussions could be far-reaching. Among the threats of retaliation made by Israeli ministers are tearing up the Oslo accords, under which the Palestinian Authority was given control of parts of the West Bank and Gaza, annexing West Bank settlements to Israel and withholding tax revenues which Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinians. But, Shaath said, “there will not be any rowing back, reticence or hesitation in completing our mission of seeking international support for recognition of our independent Palestinian state on 1967 borders.” He added: “This is the moment of truth.” The Palestinians were still prepared to look at fresh proposals for a return to peace talks, but “after all the discussions, negotiations, threats, incentives and meetings of the past two to three weeks” they were now committed to going to the security council. Jerusalem and Ramallah have been the scene of frenetic diplomatic activity in the past week. In addition to Hale and Ross, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Middle East envoy Tony Blair have been attempting to formulate proposals to bring the two sides back to the negotiating table. Meetings with the US delegation had continued until “the last minutes before the president’s speech”, said Shaath. As well as rounding on the Americans, he dismissed Blair’s efforts to craft a statement by the Quartet on the Middle East (the US, EU, UN and Russia) as a framework for restarting talks. “Mr Blair doesn’t sound like a neutral interlocutor, he sounds very much like an Israeli diplomat sometimes,” he said. In contrast, “the Europeans have played a much more serious and positive game. The Europeans were seriously engaged.” But the EU had failed to unite around a common position and “they are also being threatened by the US”, he said. The Palestinian team was not alarmed by the prospect of the US withholding funding in the aftermath of their approach to the UN. “To tell you the truth we’re not concerned. You don’t barter for your rights for money,” he said. Arab states had pledged to make up any shortfall, and “the Europeans have assured us they won’t cut our funds, so have the Japanese”. Shaath said the Palestinians had only two serious options. One was to go back to war, “which we don’t want. There is nobody planning violence on this side, but Netanyahu would love to make the world believe that Israel is threatened. We are not going back to violence – it’s too costly for us and the Israelis”. The other was to go to the international community to seek support for a Palestinian state. The US said it continued to be committed to a return to talks. “What we are focused on is… getting them back to the table so that they can address the many final status issues and reach a comprehensive peace agreement that results in two states living side by side,” a State Department spokesman said. Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said: “When the Palestinian Authority will abandon these futile and unilateral measures at the UN, it will find Israel to be a genuine partner for direct peace negotiations.” Palestinian territories Mahmoud Abbas Israel Middle East peace talks United Nations Tony Blair Binyamin Netanyahu US foreign policy Harriet Sherwood guardian.co.uk
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The Libyan regime’s remnants are fighting behind human shields, knowing that they face war crimes trials The three rockets came out of a blue sky with a sound something between a howl and a hiss, exploding with harsh, dry detonations on the far side of the hill from the rebel field hospital outside Sirte. The staff here, at a converted roadside diner, hardly had time to pick themselves up off the tarmac before the first casualties came in. A rebel soldier was rushed in on a maroon stretcher, his combat trousers torn, a mass of blood soaking through his T-shirt. The eating area has been converted into an operating theatre, and the young fighter was hauled on to a table, blood dripping on to the marble floor. Minutes later, more ambulances screamed in, and this time there were howls from the medical staff when the doors of the battered red and white ambulance opened. It was the body of an ambulance driver, a man who had ferried wounded from battlefields dating back to the street fighting in Misrata in March. Now he had no face. “He’s a good friend of mine, I’ve known him for seven years. He left for duty this morning,” sobbed a bespectacled medic as the body was taken to a store room and covered in a blue sheet. More casualties began to arrive as the crump and bump of rockets and artillery erupted over the hill. Distant plumes of smoke from air-bursts were visible high in the sky. On the highway outside the hospital, a long column of black pickup trucks mounted with anti-aircraft guns thundered past, taking the turning to the left used by units reinforcing rebels inside the city. Another ambulance arrived with a wounded CNN television producer, Ian Lee, 27, from Wyoming. He had been hit in the ankle by a fragment from a rocket-propelled grenade as the crew watched fighting along the coastal road. “We took fire. I got out to get down. We got hit by some RPGs,” he said. “I felt something hit my leg. I rolled over the embankment to get some more cover because we were continuing to take fire.” Three days after a massive rebel force of 900 armed pickup trucks, supported by tanks and Nato bombers, surged into the city that is Muammar Gaddafi’s birthplace and final coastal stronghold, loyalist units continue to resist. It was not supposed to be this way. The rebels dominate the city, have captured the airport and units are surging through the countryside to the south. Yet loyalist forces continue to hold out four weeks after opposition forces arrived in Tripoli to proclaim that the Gaddafi regime was defeated. “They’re crazy, they’re mad,” said Abdul Baset Hadia, a bearded fighter taking a break from the battle raging in the city. He said loyalist fighters were using civilians as human shields whenever they moved buildings, sending women and children into the street to stop the shooting. “They make a wall of women and children. We can finish it today but we know there are a lot of civilians there. We don’t want to kill them.” He said loyalist units were fortified within “Ouagadougou”, a sprawling complex in whose great hall Gaddafi had nursed his ambition to be King of Africa. Many African leaders, grateful for the millions of oil dollars he gave them, were happy to applaud him when he held a summit for the Arab League and African Union here in October 2009. Now the shell-scarred hall has become a bastion for the remnants of his regime: foreign mercenaries who fear death if they are captured rubbing shoulders with members of the Legion Thoria, Gaddafi’s secret police, and the survivors of the 32nd brigade, commanded by Gaddafi’s son Khamis. The brigade was the tormentor of Misratans, who make up the bulk of the rebel army. Earlier, at one of the rebel checkpoints around Sirte, Abdyulhakim Abuzakum, a rebel brigade commander from Misrata who trained as an airline pilot in Oxford, had a different explanation for the fanatical resistance of Gaddafi’s army. The reason was the piece of paper he clutched in his hand, containing a list of Gaddafi officials, thugs, soldiers and torturers the rebels want to catch. Many of them are thought to be trapped in Sirte, or to the south-west in Beni Walid, the other Gaddafi stronghold still holding out. And Abuzakum’s job is to find them. “We are not Colonel Gaddafi, who kills people for nothing,” he said. “If we capture them, they will go to the justice.” He means war crimes trials, for which mountains of evidence has already been gathered. For those found guilty of murder or torture, the penalty is death. Some rebels believe the loyalist forces still resisting here know they are dead, one way or the other. Libya Muammar Gaddafi Arab and Middle East unrest Middle East Africa Chris Stephen guardian.co.uk
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Deputy PM emphasises party’s ‘distinct voice’ and describes Tories as ‘our political enemies’ in speech at party conference Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat party leader and deputy prime minister, has warned that the party is “prepared to be awkward” in coalition “to put things right” as he sought to assert the party’s distinctive role in government. In the first large gathering of Lib Dem activists since the party received a drubbing at the May polls, Clegg sought to allay the fears of rank and file members over a number of high profile policies by reassuring them that Lib Dem ministers’ job in government was “not to make things easy” for the Tories, but to protect “Liberal values”. In a speech in which he described the Conservatives as “our political enemies”, the leader underlined the party’s mission to assert a “distinct Liberal Democrat voice” on government policies. “Make no mistake, we are punching above our weight,” he told delegates at the rally held on the opening day of the party’s annual conference. The deputy prime minister, who has previously been accused of becoming too cosy with Tory leader David Cameron, stressed that the Lib Dems and the Tories “have not become the same and we never will”. In a combative speech, he sent a strong signal to Conservative colleagues that the Lib Dems would be as awkward as necessary to ensure the government has “Liberal Democrat written on it like a stick of rock”. Although the coalition may appear united in public, Lib Dem ministers were fighting “tooth and nail” for the party’s values behind the scenes, Clegg said. He flaunted a recent report by the BBC that suggests that more of the Lib Dem manifesto is being delivered in government than the priorities set out by the Conservatives, despite the fact that the Lib Dems have just eight percent of MPs in Westminster. “This coalition government has a distinct Liberal Democrat voice and you will hear it,” said Clegg. Speaking after the leadership successfully faced down the first challenge from activists over the decision to rule out the possibility of a vote on the NHS reforms during this week’s conference , Clegg told delegates that “like all families, we have our shares of rows”. But he said these allowed the party to thrash out its priorities and then go out and fight for them all the way. “And when we’ve set ourselves something we don’t give up, no matter how long it takes,” he said, “We never oppose for the sake of opposition but we never shrink from telling it like it is and fighting for what is right. If that makes us a bit awkward, a bit challenging, a bit difficult so be it”. Clegg hit out at the media for trying to “drive a wedge” between the leadership and the rank and file. However, he also sounded a conciliatory note, saying: “What you told me is that we’re not getting across clearly enough what we are achieving in government. “You have heard tonight how we are delivering in government – fair taxes, a fair start for children, building a new green economy and fixing our broken politics. These are the things we put on the front page of our manifesto and now we are delivering them for our country.” Clegg set the tone ahead of the conference as he made clear his determination to keep the 50p top rate of tax despite calls from some of their Tory party coalition partners to have it scrapped. In an interview with the Independent , he said the Liberal Democrats would back abolition of the top rate in the long run if it was not raising much revenue and if it was replaced by new taxes on “unearned income”. These could include a 1% annual “mansion tax” on homes worth more than £2m, a land tax, and restricting tax relief on pensions to the basic 20p rate. He also risked inflaming tensions with chancellor George Osborne by acknowledging that the government had to do more to boost growth in the economy, adopting what he called a “Plan A-plus”. Osborne has made no secret of his desire to abolish the 50p rate on incomes over £150,000 – describing it as a “temporary” measure introduced by the former Labour government. However, Clegg made clear that as far as the Lib Dems were concerned, the priority had to be reducing the burden of taxation on lower- and middle-income earners. He said cutting rates for the wealthy while millions were struggling to make ends meet could “destroy” public support for the entire tax system. Business secretary Vince Cable gave a strong signal of a possible trade off between the top rate of tax and the “mansion tax” he championed before the general election. “The argument for that has increased because of the way the property market has worked, particularly in high value areas like London,” Cable told activists during a question and answer session. “So that is out there as a proposal. It is not in the coalition agreement but if the Conservatives were willing to run with that then one could be more flexible with the 50p rate.” Nick Clegg Liberal Democrat conference 2011 Liberal Democrat conference Liberal Democrats Liberal Democrat conference 2010 Liberal-Conservative coalition Economic policy Tax and spending Hélène Mulholland guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …The science behind washing laundry exclusively in cold water has come a long way in recent years, but consumers just aren’t buying it—literally. The New York Times notes that sales of cold-water detergents are languishing, even though they generally measure up to their hot-water counterparts and save on money,…
Continue reading …Maybe some interesting child-support cases in the offing? An Alabama pharmaceuticals company messed up the order of its birth-control pills and has issued a recall, reports ABC News . It includes this not-so-welcome warning: “As a result of this packaging error, the daily regimen for these oral contraceptives may be incorrect…
Continue reading …The gun-control debate faces a California test: A bill on Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk would make it illegal for residents to openly carry a gun. If Brown signs it, California would be the first state since 1987 to ban the practice, notes the Los Angeles Times . Brown is a gun…
Continue reading …As horrific as yesterday’s crash at an air race event in Reno was, some witnesses say it could have been far worse if not for last-second maneuvers by the veteran pilot. “If he wouldn’t have pulled up, he would have taken out the entire bleacher section,” one dad there with…
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