New York Times Report July 16, 2011
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* AKA, The Rupert Murdock Edition
Not since the mysterious discovery on a table in the White house of long lost Rose Law Firm records, has large amounts of evidence been such an obvious rock star on the world stage.
“I’m not going to go down and look at bin bags” asserted Scotland Yard’s
Assistant Commissioner John Yates of the Metropolitan Police Service (when he) publicly acknowledged that he had not actually gone through the evidence.
according to a report in the European section of The New York Times online edition filed by Don Van Natta Jr.
Not even to research the meaning of “11,000 pages of handwritten notes listing nearly 4,000 celebrities, politicians, sports stars, police officials and crime victims whose phones may have been hacked by The News of the World, a now defunct British tabloid newspaper.”
Perhaps if there had been twelve thousand notes, elite Mr Yates might have remembered his public responsibility and the role he is no doubt reasonably compensated to perform. At the least, it does not seem too much to expect him to have stooped low enough to instruct underlings to do what was above him.
Or was self interest and avoidance of unwanted scrutiny the cause of essentially hiding relevant evidence from the public?
Conservative British Prime Minister Cameron acknowledged “Cozy and comfortable” was going to get it’s day in the sun according to a concurrent report by John Burns.
Cameron conceded:
(The) world in which politicians, the press and the police in Britain have functioned for decades, (is) one he said had to yield to much greater public scrutiny.
On a lighter note, one can hope that perpetual King in Waiting, Prince Charles will get not also get tagged on this one.
Mr Cameron’s most obvious “mistake” ensuring his tagging was his Colin Powell like error when perhaps innocently asserting the erroneous findings of an investigation, that the admitted phone hacking was limited to one reporter.
His biggest mistake was his socializing with the Murdock team whose changing of support from the Labour Party helped his Conservative Party to put him in office.
The nail in the coffin, whether it comes to that or not, may be his overriding of fellow Conservatives strong advice not to hire Mr. Andy Coulson in 2007, shortly after he resigned at The News of the World.
I think it is safe to predict that neither Olafur Eliasson or Vaclav Havel, the first president of the Czech Republic after the fall of communism are likely to recommend that Mr Cameron replace Vladimir Putin as one of the Brandenburg Four of the Quadriga Prize.
Comment by Chief Hypocrite on 17 July 2011:
And the beat goes on at the NY Times AND the Wall Street Journal, the later owned by Dow Jones and controlled by the Murdocks. The NY Times editorial position corresponds to ‘Get Murdock” in lock step with the now out of power British Labour Party which was not as aggressive when Murdock supported their party in earlier elections.
The Journal is pulling no punches, seemingly trying to avoid charges of bias or coverup. Imagine that happening in Russian, Cuba, Venezuela, Middle East, Chine etc. This from the Journal:
Ms. Brooks had become the public face of the scandal and for many British lawmakers their chief target. Chris Bryant, the Labour lawmaker who has pushed the issue hardest, said he was “delighted” by the news, and that Ms. Brooks should have been arrested in 2003 when she told a parliamentary committee that News International had paid police officials.
Mr. Bryant thinks that police attention should now focus on James Murdoch, given he was privy to out-of-court settlements made to several people who had complained of phone hacking. “It feels as if the water is lapping around the feet of the Murdoch family now,” he said.
Comment by Chief Hypocrite on 17 July 2011:
The Economist has not updated their online edition since the arrest of Ms Brooks. How could they be more clear than yesterdays pronouncements: