The MURDOCH Empire and its Nest of VIPERS: #Leveson #NewsInternational #McCann :Mark Hollings...

The MURDOCH Empire and its Nest of VIPERS: #Leveson #NewsInternational #McCann :Mark Hollings...: Kevin Halligen is in a British jail awaiting extradition to America. It was alleged he stole 300.000 pounds from the Madeleine fund BUT no...

Cop who took naked photos of rape victim can keep pension - NYPOST.com

A detective who was fired for taking and keeping naked pictures of a rape victim — the step-daughter of rocker David Bowie — and of a woman who was busted for a traffic infraction is entitled to his pension, a state appeals court ruled yesterday.

Richard Vecchio was a 19-year veteran of the NYPD and a father of five when he was booted off the force after his colleagues found the creepy keepsakes.

One was a set of 15 nude photos of model Stacia Lipka — the daughter of Bowie’s ex-wife Angela — in the hospital after she’d been raped. The other was a picture of a bare breast of a female suspect with a piercing that he claimed he might need for evidence later on.

Vecchio was found not guilty of criminal charges in the Lipka case, but was convicted at a departmental trial and then fired.

Vecchio filed suit challenging the finding of wrongdoing and contending his penalty was too harsh. In a 4-1 ruling, the state Appellate Division upheld the picture charges, but tossed some of the lesser findings.

They ordered his case to go back before the police commissioner for resentencing — but said that even if Ray Kelly still decides he should be terminated, Vecchio “should be permitted to apply for a vested interest retirement.”

They said that despite his “unseemly” behavior, Vecchio had an “otherwise exemplary career” that garnered him 12 medals for excellent police duty, and that his “innocent family” would suffer without the retirement benefits.

The dissenting judge, John Sweeny, said his colleagues were going too far. “The majority cannot question that the commissioner engaged in anything other than a careful review of this case, including the effect the penalty would have on” Vecchio, Sweeny wrote.

Vecchio had already cost the city plenty. The city paid Lipka an $80,000 settlement, and the woman who was arrested for the traffic infraction was paid $70,000.

 

Cop who took naked photos of rape victim can keep pension - NYPOST.com

The MURDOCH Empire and its Nest of VIPERS: #Leveson Inquiry : The Barclay Brothers - Who Are ...

The MURDOCH Empire and its Nest of VIPERS: #Leveson Inquiry : The Barclay Brothers - Who Are ...: Precious little is known of Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay, despite being renowned for seizing business opportunities in media, reta...

The MURDOCH Empire and its Nest of VIPERS: #Leveson : #dialmformurdoch - Rebekah Brooks’ offi...

The MURDOCH Empire and its Nest of VIPERS: #Leveson : #dialmformurdoch - Rebekah Brooks’ offi...: Today sees the publication of Tom Watson and Martin Hickman’s book Dial M for Murdoch, which seems full to the brim with secrets of the ...

The MURDOCH Empire and its Nest of VIPERS: #Leveson #dialmformurdoch :A new book which promi...

The MURDOCH Empire and its Nest of VIPERS: #Leveson #dialmformurdoch :A new book which promi...: Dial M for Murdoch, by the Labour MP Tom Watson and The Independent journalist Martin Hickman, will hit bookshops on Thursday. Subtitled ...

The MURDOCH Empire and its Nest of VIPERS: #Leveson Inquiry : #MET Corruption -Report due on ...

The MURDOCH Empire and its Nest of VIPERS: #Leveson Inquiry : #MET Corruption -Report due on ...: A report is published today on a contract handed by the Metropolitan Police to a former News of the World executive. Scotland Yard p...

The MURDOCH Empire and its Nest of VIPERS: #Freemason #Leveson : Operation #Motorman -Guido F...

The MURDOCH Empire and its Nest of VIPERS: #Freemason #Leveson : Operation #Motorman -Guido F...: Commissioner's Office condemns disclosure of alleged requests by NI journalists to private investigator Operation Motorman: Paul Staines,...

Gaza rockets hit Israel after drone attack: police

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: Two rockets fired from the Gaza Strip hit southern Israel early on Sunday, without causing casualties or damage, police said.

"They fell on open ground. Nobody was injured and there was no property damage," police spokeswoman Luba Samri told AFP.

On Saturday night, a rocket fired from an Israeli drone wounded two Palestinians riding a motorcycle in Rafah in the Gaza Strip. The military said they had been on their way to fire rockets at Israel.

"Aircraft thwarted a rocket launch in the southern Gaza Strip," a military spokeswoman told AFP.

Last month, a series of Israeli air strikes and Palestinian rocket salvoes followed Israel's killing of Zuhair al-Qaisi, head of the Gaza-based Popular Resistance Committees, prompting other militant groups to fire rockets.

Palestinians in Gaza fired more than 310 rockets at Israel, and Israeli warplanes carried out dozens of air strikes, killing 25 people, among them 14 members of Islamic Jihad.

Israeli public radio said that the two rockets fired on Sunday morning were of the Soviet-designed Grad type, the same as those fired early on Thursday from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula at Israel's Red Sea resort of Eilat.

One slammed into a residential area of the city but caused no injuries. The second was discovered, unexploded, in the hills outside Eilat on Saturday, the military said.

In Egypt, officials said publicly that the attack was not launched from Sinai.

It was the first rocket attack from Egypt since the collapse of the regime of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in February 2011. Since he was toppled, a wave of unrest has swept the restive Sinai Peninsula bordering Israel.

Flower.

The Koch Brothers - People & Power - Al Jazeera English

The Koch Brothers - People & Power - Al Jazeera English

Buying a President.

 The Koch Brothers

People & Power asks why the billionaire siblings are spending a fortune in support of a conservative political agenda.

By People & Power reporter Bob Abeshouse

Charles and David Koch are each worth about $25bn, which makes them the fourth richest Americans. When you combine their fortunes, they are the third wealthiest people in the world. Radical libertarians who use their money to oppose government and virtually all regulation as interference with the free market, the Kochs are in a class of their own as players on the American political stage. Their web of influence in the US stretches from state capitals to the halls of congress in Washington DC.

The Koch brothers fueled the conservative Tea Party movement that vigorously opposes Barack Obama, the US president. They fund efforts to derail action on global warming, and support politicians who object to raising taxes on corporations or the wealthy to help fix America’s fiscal problems. According to New Yorker writer Jane Mayer, who wrote a groundbreaking exposé of the Kochs in 2010, they have built a top to bottom operation to shape public policy that has been “incredibly effective. They are so rich that their pockets are almost bottomless, and they can keep pouring money into this whole process”.

Koch industries, the second largest privately-held company in the US, is an oil refining, chemical, paper products and financial services company with revenues of a $100bn a year. Virtually every American household has some Koch product – from paper towels and lumber, to Stainmaster carpet and Lycra in sports clothes, to gasoline for cars. The Koch’s political philosophy of rolling back environmental and financial regulations is also beneficial to their business interests.

The Kochs rarely talk to the press, and conduct their affairs behind closed doors. But at a secret meeting of conservative activists and funders the Kochs held in Vail, Colorado this past summer, someone made undercover recordings. One caught Charles Koch urging participants to dig deep into their pockets to defeat Obama. “This is the mother of all wars we’ve got in the next 18 months,” he says, “for the life or death of this country.” He called out the names of 31 people at the Vail meeting who each contributed more than $1m over the past 12 months.

In the 2010 congressional elections, the Kochs and their partners spent at least $40m, helping to swing the balance of power in the US House of Representatives towards right-wing Tea Party Republicans. It has been reported that the Kochs are planning to raise and spend more than $200m to defeat Obama in 2012. But the brothers could easily kick in more without anyone knowing due to loopholes in US law.

The Kochs founded and provide millions to Americans for Prosperity, a political organisation that builds grassroots support for conservative causes and candidates. Americans for Prosperity, which has 35 state chapters and claims to have about two million members, has close ties to Tea Party groups and played a key role in opposing Obama’s health care initiative.

Last year, Americans for Prosperity spent at least half a million dollars supporting Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s efforts to cut social spending and roll back collective bargaining rights for public employee unions. The legislation passed by Walker makes it more difficult for unions, which are major backers of Democratic candidates, to secure funds for political purposes. Americans for Prosperity is also very active in a battle against unions in Ohio, another important 2012 presidential state. Its president, Tim Phillips, says that the organisation is winning in Wisconsin and around the country “because on the policies of economic freedom, we’re right”. He refused to tell People & Power reporter Bob Abeshouse how much the organisation is spending to combat the unions.

The Kochs have also poured millions into think tanks and academia to influence the battle over ideas. According to Kert Davies, the director of research for Greenpeace in the US, the Kochs have spent more than $50m since 1998 on “various front groups and think tanks who … oppose the consensus view that climate change is real, urgent and we have to do something about it”. As operators of oil pipelines and refineries, the Kochs have opposed all efforts to encourage alternative sources of energy by imposing a tax on fossil fuels.

Patrick Michaels, a senior fellow at the CATO Institute, often appears in the media to contest global warming science. CATO was founded by Charles Koch, and the Kochs and their foundations have contributed about $14m to CATO. Since 2009, there has been a sharp drop in the percentage of Americans who see global warming as a serious threat according to Gallup polls. Davies argues that the change can be attributed in large measure to the efforts of scientists like Michaels and others who are funded by the fossil fuel industry.

The Kochs have also promoted their free market ideology and business interests through aggressive lobbying in Washington DC, and financial support of political candidates. Greenpeace has tracked more than $50m that Koch Industries has spent on lobbyists since 2006, when Cap and Trade and other legislation to combat global warming was being considered. The Kochs have been the largest political spender since 2000 in the energy sector, exceeding Exxon, Chevron, and other major players. 

The Kochs contributed to 62 of the 87 new members of the US House of Representatives in 2010. Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that the Kochs supported have taken the lead in opposing US Environmental Protection Agency efforts to reduce global warming emissions. Other members backed by the Kochs belong to the right-wing Tea Party bloc that took the US to the brink of default in July by refusing to consider a budget deal that would include tax increases.

Since People & Power’s report on the Kochs aired last fall, supporters of the Tea Party movement have complicated the Republican presidential primaries. Tea Party supporters have shifted from candidate to candidate and failed to coalesce around Mitt Romney. Given the divisions, the Kochs have not come out publically for any candidate. They are setting their sights instead on defeating Barack Obama and expanding their influence in the US House and Senate.

According to Ken Vogel of Politico, who appears in the Koch Brothers update, one of their more ambitious new projects is setting up a national voter database called Themis to expand their fundraising and mobilising machinery. Vogel says that the effort is unprecedented, and reveals the Kochs determination to develop capabilities reserved for the major political parties in the past.

Americans for Prosperity has already spent $6m on campaign ads attacking Obama for his support of renewable energy projects. Davies of Greenpeace says the Kochs influence on the campaign debate is clear. Republicans like Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich who favored climate change legislation in the past now oppose it. President Obama, he says, is “even bragging about drilling more oil than Bush at this point.”

Americans for Prosperity is also laying the groundwork for reigniting the Tea Party to defeat Obama. In March, Americans for Prosperity and Tea Party groups are staging protests at the US Supreme Court while it considers the constitutionality of the health care law the Obama administration pushed through in 2010. The health care debate fueled the rise of the Tea Party in the first year of the Obama presidency.

Meanwhile, the Kochs are rounding up hundreds of millions of dollars for the 2012 elections. In January, they held another of their secret meetings with wealthy conservatives at a lush resort in Palm Springs, California. New attendees included the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who with his family has given $16.5m to the Super PAC backing Newt Gingrich, and Foster Friess, a wealthy financier supporting Rick Santorum in the Republican primaries.

Obama is doing his best to raise a billion dollars for the presidential race, and break all fundraising records. But Lee Fang, an investigator with the Republic Report, told reporter Bob Abeshouse that the “Kochs will have a tremendous impact. On a larger scale this election will come down to a few billionaires: a couple on the left supporting the Democrats, and a lot on the right supporting the Republicans. I think in 2013 people will look back on this election as the greatest one bought and sold.”

Powers to record every phone call and email makes surveillance...

New powers to record every phone call and email makes surveillance '60m times worse'

David Davis has claimed proposed plans to monitor emails, phone calls and websites will make existing surveillance legislation “60 million times worse”.

By Tom Whitehead - 02 Apr 2012

The former Conservative Home Secretary argued the new powers risked causing enormous resentment by allowing “unfettered” access to all forms of communication.

The Coalition is to revive plans first raised then shelved by the last Labour Government to track the activities of every Briton who uses a phone or the internet.

The proposals, to be unveiled in the Queen’s Speech, will see a huge expansion in the amount of data communication providers are required to keep for at least a year.

It will allow the police and intelligence officers to monitor who someone is in contact with or websites they visit, although the content of such communications will not be accessed.

Mr Davis said: “What this does is make (existing problems) 60 million times worse. The simple truth is that this is not necessary. What’s proposed here is completely unfettered access to every single communication you make.

“It’s a very, very big widening of powers which will be very much resented by many citizens who do not like the idea. It’s going to cause enormous resentment.

Civil liberty campaigners last night said the proposals were an “unprecedented” expansion of state intrusion more akin to China or Iran.

Labour faced fierce opposition in 2006 when it proposed creating a national database to store such information and later dropped all notion of the scheme just before the last general election.

But the new Government has revived the plans and while there will be no database, providers will be required to record all activities of their customers so they can be accessed if needed.

It comes even though the Coalition Agreement promised to "end the storage of internet and email records without good reason".

Ministers will argue it is essential to help combat terrorism and serious crime such as paedophile networks.

It raises the prospects of police or security agencies being able to monitor communications in real time on people they are investigating as well as trawling back through previous contacts.

Under new legislation, internet companies will be instructed to install hardware enabling GCHQ – the Government's electronic "listening" agency – to examine "on demand" any phone call made, text message and email sent, and website accessed.

Nick Pickles, director of the Big Brother Watch campaign group, said: "This is an unprecedented step that will see Britain adopt the same kind of surveillance seen in China and Iran.

"This is an absolute attack on privacy online and it is far from clear this will actually improve public safety, while adding significant costs to internet businesses.”

Shami Chakrabarti, director of the civil rights group Liberty, said that both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats had resisted the plan when they were in opposition.

"There is an element of whoever you vote for the empire strikes back," she said.

"This is more ambitious than anything that has been done before. It is a pretty drastic step in a democracy.”

Some internet service providers themselves are also said to be alarmed by the move.

One senior industry source described it as “mass surveillance” that is “expensive and intrusive”.

Conservative backbencher Margot James said ministers would come under pressure to water down the proposals as the legislation passed through Parliament.

"I am sure there will be considerable pressure brought to bear as the proposals are debated for protections to be built in to protect people's privacy," she said.

Guy Herbert, general secretary of NO2ID campaign group said it was "astonishing brass neck from the Home Office, attempting to feed us reheated leftovers from the authoritarian end of the (Tony) Blair administration".

"It is not very far from a bug in every living room that can be turned on and turned off at official whim. Whatever you are doing online, whoever you are in contact with, you will never know when you are being watched," he said.

The Home Office confirmed that ministers were intending to legislate "as soon as parliamentary time allows".

"It is vital that police and security services are able to obtain communications data in certain circumstances to investigate serious crime and terrorism and to protect the public. We need to take action to maintain the continued availability of communications data as technology changes," a spokesman said.

"Communications data includes time, duration and dialling numbers of a phone call, or an email address. It does not include the content of any phone call or email and it is not the intention of Government to make changes to the existing legal basis for the interception of communications."

One Year On. Why we attacked Libya. | England (UK) |Axisoflogic.com

Editor's Note: Axis of Logic columnist T.J. Coles begins his series on the destruction of Libya after one year of occupation of that country with an analysis of England's role, examining the reasons that belie the myth of a 'humanitarian war." In his letter, introducing this article he states: "I don't forget Britain's war crimes, and in this era of 'information' people move on too quickly."

One Year On. Why we attacked Libya. | England (UK) |Axisoflogic.com

Curveball - Man whose Lie caused Iraq War tells all

April 2, 2012. London. Americans may not be allowed to watch the historic interview airing in England today and tomorrow. Because of widespread censorship of the news in the US, Americans may not even hear about it. But for the first time ever, the man who single-handedly caused the US to invade the wrong country after the Sept. 11 attacks will speak to reporters in Britain, admitting his lie and telling all. His name is Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, or Curveball to the CIA.

Most Americans will admit that name means nothing to them. But phrased a different way, it means everything. “Every intelligence source from every nation in the western world had the same intelligence showing that Saddam Hussein not only had WMD, but was preparing to use them on the United States” – that’s the line former President George Bush used, the line Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld used and former CIA director George Tenet relied upon when deciding to invade Iraq in 2003.

The sad fact is, all US allies who provided intelligence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, including Britain, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Germany and France, all based that assessment on the rantings of one angry Iraqi dissident - Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi. How did the “alliance of the willing” – an assortment of US-led allies – go to war over the false testimony of just one man? Critics will argue that George W. Bush and his cabinet were going to invade Iraq regardless. This one statement by al-Janabi simply gave Bush and his father’s team what they were looking for – a reason.

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According to a statement by President George W. Bush, the reason America went to war against Saddam Hussein and Iraq wasn’t anything more than a personal family feud. “The man tried to kill my dad” the younger Bush let slip when reporters pushed for a legitimate reason for the invasion, considering all intelligence pointed to the fact that none of al-Janabi’s statements were true.

Coalition of the willing

The Canadians knew al-Janabi’s lies were just that, so did the Australians. The Germans tried to enlighten us, as well as the French. All of America’s closest and most trusted allies tried to warn America that the US was about to invade the wrong country, over lies. In fact, each of those countries refused to take part or supply troops or assistance. But while Israel fed the US even more faulty intelligence in the hopes America would wipe out one of the Jewish state’s most hated enemies, the British announced in Parliament that even though the US was wrong, the Brits would join their long-time ally in war anyway.

Explaining the reason English lives would be sacrificed over a lie, former Prime Minister Tony Blair made a statement that would reverberate throughout the world for years to come. Blair simply informed the British people that someday, Britain’s very existence would be in jeopardy. The price for securing the protection of the American war machine in the future was Britain’s blindly following the US into war with Iraq. And that was a price Blair and the British government were willing to pay.

George ‘Slam Dunk’ Tenet

When former President George W. Bush was preparing to launch a Pearl Harbor-style surprise attack against Iraq, while simultaneously in peace negotiations with them and before the US-imposed deadline expired, the President asked CIA Director George Tenet how sure he was that Iraq actually had weapons of mass destruction. According to an account in the Washington Post of Bob Woodward’s book ‘Plan of Attack’, the President asked Tenet, “George, how confident are you?” CIA Director Tenet replied to the President and his top advisors, “Don’t worry. It’s a slam dunk.” As a reward for his loyalty, President Bush awarded George Tenet the Medal of Freedom in 2004, the highest honor an American citizen can receive.

According to later admission by President Bush and his inner circle, that was the confirmation the President was waiting for to launch his long-desired war with Iraq. Most of his inner circle – Cheney, Rice, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Powell – were all left-overs from the Presidency of George Bush Sr. They made no secret that they had always felt that the senior Bush tied their hands and would not let them finish the job of removing Saddam Hussein from power the first time the US went to war with Iraq. Bush Jr. had promised to find a way to let them.

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So while the Iraqis consented to UN nuclear weapons inspections (even in Saddam Hussein’s Palace bedrooms as demanded), turned over all evidence of the destruction of their chemical and biological weapons, and gave in to every single US and UN demand, President Bush used one dishonest sentence from one dishonest man to launch a war that would cost the lives of over 100,000 civilians and thousands of America’s sons and daughters.

The interview

In an excerpt released by the BBC, the British interviewer tells al-Janabi, “We went to war in Iraq on a lie. And that lie was your lie." Al-Janabi simply replies, "Yes."

Again, Americans may not be allowed to hear about the interview with Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi on BBC today and tomorrow, just as they weren’t allowed to know the truth about Iraq and Saddam Hussein in the build-up to war. But in promotional teasers in the UK yesterday, the media outlet shows a smiling al-Janabi, arrogantly smiling as he describes how he single-handedly tricked the US into going to war. He seems to claim President Bush and Director Tenet were willing patsies, saying the Bush administration “sexed-up” his initial lie into an even bigger lie in order to sell the war to the American people and the rest of the world.

Readers may recall Colin Powell showing satellite images of bread trucks roaming Iraq’s cities to the entire United Nations in an attempt to sell the world on war with Iraq. Calling the trucks, ‘mobile WMD laboratories’, Powell insisted the US had, “facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.” The rest of the world knew that the ‘solid intelligence’ Powell referred to was the lie of al-Janabi. The UN voted to refuse to authorize the United States to go to war.

In his interview with the BBC, the first time al-Janabi has agreed to one since the Iraq war, he explains his motivation for lieing to US officials about Iraq’s WMD capabilities and intentions toward the US. He says, “My main purpose was to topple the tyrant in Iraq because the longer this dictator remains in power, the more the Iraqi people will suffer from this regime's oppression.”

According to the review in the UK’s The Independent, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi was an Iraqi chemical engineer who fled Iraq for Germany in 1999. He had been lobbying the world’s governments ever since to intervene and remove Saddam Hussein from power. As time went on, his stories about Iraqi government abuses became more and more horrifying, and at the same time, less and less true. The tall tails culminated in stories of entire divisions of mobile labs producing weapons of mass destruction, all developed and overseen by al-Janabi himself until his defection.

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From that one specific made-up claim, Colin Powell and his staff created an elaborate web of WMD programs throughout Iraq, all of which the former General claimed were proven and the US had evidence that it could not reveal without jeopardizing the lives of its secret agents abroad. In reality, every bit of it was a lie.

US official verifies al-Janabi’s claims

Also featured in the special BBC segment and described by The Independent, former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff – Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson – confirmed that he and Powell’s staff “sexed-up” al-Janabi’s original story. Taking crude drawings from al-Janabi of mobile laboratory trucks, the US State Department devised elaborate images of these non-existent mobile weapons labs. “I brought the White House team in to do the graphics," Wilkerson admits, "Intelligence was being worked to fit around the policy."

Col. Wilkerson also tells the publication that he thinks the former General has to be enraged at the way he was used by the Bush administration. Wilkerson explains, "I don't see any way on this earth that Secretary Powell doesn't feel almost a rage about Curveball and the way he was used in regards to that intelligence." Curveball was the CIA codename for Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi.

Modern Spies – US senior official almost seduced by Russian spy

The BBC interview with al-Janabi is one part of a two-part special broadcast titled, ‘Modern Spies’. Another part of the series airing today and tomorrow details the high-profile arrest of the voluptuous, red-headed Russian spy named Anna Chapman in 2010. Arrested along with 10 other accused Russian spies, the attractive red-head became the symbol of the Russian spy cell.

The BBC interview reveals exactly why the spy ring was exposed and shut down by US authorities when it was. The FBI’s head of counter-intelligence, Frank Figliuzzi, explains that Anna Chapman was maneuvering, “closer and closer to higher and higher ranking leadership... She got close enough to disturb us." Figliuzzi goes on to describe an unnamed member of President Barack Obama’s Cabinet who was on the verge of becoming a victim of the “honey pot”. That’s what they called Russina spy Anna Chapman and her seduction tactics.

In explaining the reason the FBI moved in on Chapman and her Russian spy network when it did, Figliuzzi says, “We were becoming very concerned. They were getting close enough to a sitting US cabinet member that we thought we could no longer allow this to continue."

The special report ‘Modern Spies’ is the result of BBC veteran reporter Peter Taylor, who worked for a year putting the documentary together. It airs on BBC2 today and tomorrow.