Artful Dodger: So you'd quite happily become what you say you are against!!

Hasn't history taught you anything... In the end killing does not work. You can't kill an idea.

If the USA did what you thought was a good idea, it'd have to be labelled as a terrorist state. Well, it'd have to be labelled as a state that has gone from using others (dictators/drug lords, etc) to direct acts of murder and terror.

N' in the process you'd be abandoning Jesus. Becoming an example of what is written of 'righteous' men gone wacko.. as written!!

R2P

טז לֹא-תֵלֵךְ רָכִיל בְּעַמֶּיךָ, לֹא תַעֲמֹד עַל-דַּם רֵעֶךָ: אֲנִי, יְהוָה.

(V): More to the truth: I like the idea of eliminating bad guys and saving the innocents. Even if that means using torture.

Nope... just pointing out that you seem to like the idea of killing so much.

Not very Christian.

(V): I missed nothing. Yer pettifoggin!

(V): you have a real problem telling the difference between sarcasm, tongue in cheek, and a genuine position. Miss that class in college did ya?

Artful Dodger: What ever happened to "though shall not kill". That you say it's ok to kill the terrorists just like they say it's ok to kill anyone who they see as an enemy.

"I'm on the side of the innocent."

No just on the side of what is called 'blood lust'. If you were on the side of the innocents then you wouldn't say this...

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
"Would you be happy to have them tortured as 'legally' sanction by the US government to find out where those kids are??"

No, I'd rather see the bus load of kids murdered. Can't have torture even if innocent people will die. Even kids. Doesn't matter. Let the kids die.


It seems like you just wanna kill islamists, just like the crusaders from old!!

(V): You sure go out of your way trying to protect killers. You've even admitted you'd let your own kids die rather than waterboard a suspect to find out where he's hid them. I don't share those concerns for terrorists. I'm on the side of the innocent.

BTW, you're wrong about executions for waterboarding. Stay away from those far left websites.

Artful Dodger: Really.... you really think that!! You'd shot someone on an island and stand face to face to their family and say ... "it's ok I didn't break any laws"..

"Also, if we just built a ship to the moon, put all the bad guys on it, landed it on the moon with a limited amount of oxygen, they'd all die and it's not against the law."

Sounds like the Nazi's excusing the gas chambers.

"and they could get laid that very night by one of their 72 virgins. "

Like Revelations promising Christians they all go to heaven, yet all the rest of the world is burning and damned!!...

"And I didn't watch the chainsaw thing. So you have me at a disadvantage. I don't watch that crap."

Not even the likes of the George Romero Zombie films?

Yale University has an excellent web site called the Avalon Project, which lists all of the documents, transcripts and pleadings from both the Nuremberg Trials and the Tokyo Trials.

Here is the actual Indictment:

There were seven individuals who were executed for war crimes
stemming from the International Military Tribunal for the Far East:

General Doihara Kenji, spy (later Air Force commander) Convicted on Counts 1, 27, 29, 31, 32, 35, 36, and 54

Baron Hirota Koki, foreign minister Convicted on Counts 1, 27, 29, 31, 32, 54 and 55,

General Itagaki Seishiro, war minister , Convicted on Counts 1, 27, 29, 31, 32, 35, 36 and 54

General Kimura Heitaro, commander, Burma Expeditionary Force Convicted on Counts 1, 27, 29, 31, 32, 54 and 55

General Matsui Iwane, commander, Shanghai Expeditionary Force found
guilty of class B and C war crimes; e.g.; for his participation in the
atrocities committed at Nanking.

General Muto Akira, commander, Philippines Expeditionary Force Convicted of Counts 1, 27, 29, 31, 32, 54 and 55.

General Tojo Hideki, commander, Kwantung Army (later prime minister) Convicted of Counts 1, 27, 29, 31, 32, 54 and 55

http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/International_Military_Tribunal_for_the_Far_East_-_Sentences/id/1508175

http://www.trial-ch.org/en/trial-watch/profile/db/facts/akira_muto_82.html

None of these individuals were convicted for “waterboarding”!!
Although some of the Defendants were convicted of Count 55, which was
failing to observe and protect prisoners of war from the Allied forces
as per the laws and customs of war, it is a far far, downright
impossible stretch to conclude that any of the Generals who were
convicted and hung were convicted and executed because of their
involvement in anything that remotely resembles modern day
waterboarding!

(V): It's not murder. Murder is a legal term and if they went to a deserted island with no laws or if done in secret, it's neither legal or illegal. Also, if we just built a ship to the moon, put all the bad guys on it, landed it on the moon with a limited amount of oxygen, they'd all die and it's not against the law. Giving someone a free ride to the moon is a generous thing. Sucks to run out of oxygen but hey, the terrorists would be closer to their heaven and they could get laid that very night by one of their 72 virgins.

And I didn't watch the chainsaw thing. So you have me at a disadvantage. I don't watch that crap.

Artful Dodger: That would be murder, and a complete loss of moral high ground...

You didn't nick the idea from a movie like "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" did you?

(V): Besides, I've just moved on to killing them on the spot. That seems to be OK with the liberals and the conservatives. Maybe we can let all the terrorists go (release them in the desert) and then have a hunting party. You know, like target practice.

(V): Sure, if it makes you happy. I was wrong.

Artful Dodger: I'm just curious over why after 3 years odd of you supporting torture, you've now developed some common humanity on the subject.

... so you are admitting you were wrong?

(V): What, now you're not happy I agree it's torture?

Artful Dodger: Funny... it seems the recent and past posts of you stating that water boarding was torture and you supported it's use have ''''vanished'''!!

...almost... examples encapsulated in replies..."You say its torture, I say it's not. I want my government to have in its toolbox the right, under presidential order, to use waterboarding."

You've found 'Jesus' on torture

(V): I don't know why you think you need to give me a history lesson. I studied war history in college. And if you look at my posts below, I refer to waterboarding as torture. And I also say it's not the perferred way. Drone strikes are better. Better to kill them first and ask questions later. At least that's the Obama Administrations current policy. Seems ok to send in the bombs but not the water. OK, I'll go along with that.

There are better ways to question a terrorist. Electric voltage to his testicles would probably get some info. I'm not sure if that's torture though. They didn't cover that one in college but Jack Bauer used it and got lots of info.

Artful Dodger: Ok.... so lets go back in history to past uses of water boarding and the consequences there of...

"After the Spanish American War of 1898 in the Philippines, the U.S. army used waterboarding, called the "water cure" at the time. It is not clear where this practice came from; it probably was adopted from the Filipinos, who themselves adopted it from the Spanish.[105] Reports of "cruelties" from soldiers stationed in the Philippines led to Senate hearings on U.S. activity there.

Testimony described the waterboarding of Tobeniano Ealdama "while supervised by ...Captain/Major Edwin F. Glenn (Glenn Highway)."[106]

Elihu Root, United States Secretary of War, ordered a court martial for Glenn in April 1902."[107] During the trial, Glenn "maintained that the torture of Ealdama was 'a legitimate exercise of force under the laws of war.'"[106]

Though some reports seem to confuse Ealdama with Glenn,[108] Glenn was found guilty and "sentenced to a one-month suspension and a fifty-dollar fine," the leniency of the sentence due to the "circumstances" presented at the trial.[106]

President Theodore Roosevelt privately rationalized the instances of "mild torture, the water cure" but publicly called for efforts to "prevent the occurrence of all such acts in the future.""

"The use of "third degree interrogation" techniques to compel confession, ranging from "psychological duress such as prolonged confinement to extreme violence and torture", was widespread in early American policing. Lassiter classified the water cure as "orchestrated physical abuse",[110] and described the police technique as a "modern day variation of the method of water torture that was popular during the Middle Ages". The technique employed by the police involved either holding the head in water until almost drowning, or laying on the back and forcing water into the mouth or nostrils.[110] Such techniques were classified as "'covert' third degree torture" since they left no signs of physical abuse, and became popular after 1910 when the direct application of physical violence to force a confession became a media issue and some courts began to deny obviously compelled confessions."

"Chase J. Nielsen, one of the U.S. airmen who flew in the Doolittle raid following the attack on Pearl Harbor, was subjected to waterboarding by his Japanese captors.[117] At their trial for war crimes following the war, he testified "Well, I was put on my back on the floor with my arms and legs stretched out, one guard holding each limb. The towel was wrapped around my face and put across my face and water poured on. They poured water on this towel until I was almost unconscious from strangulation, then they would let up until I'd get my breath, then they'd start over again... I felt more or less like I was drowning, just gasping between life and death."[38] The United States hanged Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American prisoners of war."

"Waterboarding was designated as illegal by U.S. generals in the Vietnam War.[122] On 21 January 1968, The Washington Post published a controversial front-page photograph of two U.S soldiers and one South Vietnamese soldier participating in the waterboarding of a North Vietnamese POW near Da Nang.[123] The article described the practice as "fairly common".[123] The photograph led to the soldier being court-martialled by a U.S. military court within one month of its publication, and he was discharged from the army.[122][124] Another waterboarding photograph of the same scene, referred to as "water torture" in the caption, is also exhibited in the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City.[125]"

"The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission received testimony from Charles Zeelie and Jeffrey Benzien, officers of the South African Police under Apartheid, that they used waterboarding, referred to as "tubing", or the "wet bag technique" on political prisoners as part of a wide range of torture methods to extract information.[131][132]:pp.206 Specifically, a cloth bag was wet and placed over victim's heads, to be removed only when they were near asphyxiation; the procedure was repeated several times.[131][132]:pp.206 The TRC concluded that the act constituted torture and a gross human rights violation, for which the state was responsible..."

....................Now, if all these courts and cases state that water boarding is torture and illegal, and as such a war crime......

... How can you say it is not?

(V): "Would you be happy to have them tortured as 'legally' sanction by the US government to find out where those kids are??"

No, I'd rather see the bus load of kids murdered. Can't have torture even if innocent people will die. Even kids. Doesn't matter. Let the kids die.

"One of your kids is a spy and gets caught. By the law of this other land, torture is allowed."

This already happens. The Taliban slices off your head. That must suck.

"Speaking of kids, do you have any? lets say you do and they are 4 and 5 and have been burried alive in a small container with limited oxygen (4 hours). You have the guy who burried them."

Well what about the other way around.... you have older kids.. 4 or 5 of them that have chosen to join some 'cult' and have kidnapped a school bus full of kids.

One gets seen and captured by the authorities. He won't tell anyone where they are.... Would you be happy to have them tortured as 'legally' sanction by the US government to find out where those kids are??

........................ as quoted often... Jesus... Caesar... law of land.

One of your kids is a spy and gets caught. By the law of this other land, torture is allowed.

That then by the right wingers here is ok and legal.

But the pit keeps staring back.

May 15, 2012

More Drone Strikes Against AQAP in Yemen

This is getting interesting.

Long War Journal:

The
US launched two drone strikes today in a city in southern Yemen that is
currently under the control of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Seven
AQAP fighters and eight civilians are reported to have been killed in
the airstrikes.

The first strike targeted "a militant hideout" in Jaar, a city in
Abyan province that is currently under al Qaeda control, CNN reported.
The eight civilians were killed after they attempted to recover the
bodies of AQAP fighters, apparently after the unmanned US Predators or
Reapers launched a second salvo of missiles into the hideout.

This follows airstrikes and Yemeni military activity against AQAP over the weekend.

Read "civilians" as "people who just happen to hang with al-Qaeda on a Tuesday afternoon."

Come to think of it even the al-Qaeda are "civilians", they are unlawful belligerents.

Übergeek 바둑이: Speaking of kids, do you have any? lets say you do and they are 4 and 5 and have been burried alive in a small container with limited oxygen (4 hours). You have the guy who burried them. They will die of suffocation unless he tells you where he burried them. What would you do? (in this case I wouldn't use a drone nor would I use waterboarding - I'd Jack Bauer him.

rod03801: Yeah but if they had just blown him up they wouldn't get all this bad press about waterboarding. Heck, when I was a kid, we waterboarded all the time down at the beach!

Übergeek 바둑이: I agree with you on waterboarding. No to waterboarding. Just assasinate them. Drone killing. Much cleaner and you don't have to pay for their lawyer.

But are you willing to say that in ANY and ALL circumstances that waterboarding or ANY enhanced interrogation technique is a no-no?

Übergeek 바둑이: Always back to Bush? Because Bush did it you're saying it's ok?

Artful Dodger:

> Obama's current practice is much better: Just kill them wherever you find them. Assassinate them.

And Bush never did that? No, Bush did better. Just put them all in Abu Graib.

The nice thing about waterboarding is that anyone can do it. Sooner or later western intelligence agents will get caught and waterboarded too. It will be OK, because is not "torture".

Of course, defenders of it will prove to me that it is harmless when I see them put their own children through the treatment. If their kids puke and scream, we can all say "poor babies". But then, it is perfectly Christian to waterboard somebody until they puke and scream.

Artful Dodger:

And this question : ".. anyone saying waterboarding is ok here on this board willing to go through 360 drownings?"

I'm not a terrorist. I'm not worried. I say put him through 1000 more "drownings".

Abu Zubaydah vomiting? Poor baby. What did he do to deserve that?

And Khalid Sheikh Mohammed "suffered" when interrogated? Awww, that's just not right. So he killed a few thousand innocent people, sliced off a few head of people while they were alive, and plotted more killing and mayhem. That's no excuse to torture him!

I'd forget about all this torture stuff. It's bad policy. Obama's current practice is much better: Just kill them wherever you find them. Assassinate them. Send in the drones, drop a few bombs, kill a few bad guys (and some innocent people too - even kids) all in a day's work. Obama has even assassinated two American citizens with no due process and no trial. Just an "OK" and they were killed.

No mess. No press. Just some blood splatter and mangled bodies, mostly unrecognizable. That's the way to do it. Read them their rights first though:

"You have the right to be dead!" BOOM!

"""Secret CIA video tapes of the waterboarding of Osama Bin Laden's suspected jihadist travel arranger Abu Zubaydah show him vomiting and screaming, the BBC has learned.

The tapes were destroyed by the head of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, Jose Rodriguez.

In an exclusive interview for Newsnight, Rodriguez has defended the destruction of the tapes and denied waterboarding and other interrogation techniques amount to torture.

The CIA tapes are likely to become central to the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of 9/11, at Guantanamo Bay.

When Khalid Sheikh Mohammed appeared before a special military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay last Saturday, he refused to put on the headphones that would enable him to hear the translator.

His civilian attorney, David Nevin, said he could not wear them because of the torture he had suffered during his interrogation."""

Mr Rodriguez states that all the waterboarding applications took less then 10 seconds each and the total time was less than 60 minutes.

That's a possible 360 times then...

.. anyone saying waterboarding is ok here on this board willing to go through 360 drownings?

Christopher Hitchens in his try of this torture via Vanity Fair has some views on it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LPubUCJv58

In light of emails and evidence given at the Leveson inquiry, It appears the Conservatives didn't know what to do about the phone hacking....

... So they asked News Corp what should No. 10's (that's Downing street .. aka the PM's residence) position be!!

... An inquiry was thought to be not a good idea.. too many skeletons.

Aviva suffered a major shareholder revolt today after more than half
of the votes at its annual meeting failed to back the insurer's pay
awards.

In another sign of growing investor activism, the defeat came despite chief executive Andrew Moss this week waiving a near-5 per cent pay rise which would have taken his annual salary over the £1 million mark.

Some 50 per cent of votes placed outside the AGM went against the pay report, while an additional 9 per cent were withheld, in one of the biggest ever shareholder protest votes.

The remuneration report would have been thrown out completely had new measures to give shareholders binding votes, as put forward by Business Secretary Vince Cable and backed by investor groups included the Association of British Insurers, been brought into effect.

The embarrassing defeat follows a similar showdown between shareholders and banking giant Barclays, in which nearly a third of votes failed to back its remuneration report after chief executive Bob Diamond took a £17.7 million pay package for 2011.

Similar scenes were playing out at Hovis to Mr Kipling owner Premier Foods' annual meeting, where just over 30 per cent of shareholder votes failed to back the remuneration report.

Premier, which saw its shares slide around 70 per cent throughout 2011, paid around £3.5 million to its executives last year, including a £1.9 million "golden hello" for new chief executive Michael Clarke when he joined eight months ago.

Back at Aviva, Mr Moss was awarded a 4.6 per cent rise in March on his £960,000 annual salary but has decided not to accept the increase following talks with major investors.

Mr Moss was also awarded a £1.2 million bonus, equal to 120 per cent of salary, while Trevor Matthews, Aviva UK chief executive, was awarded a £45,000 bonus despite just joining the board on December 2.

Aviva chairman Lord Sharman apologised to shareholders at the AGM for ignoring their views when setting executive pay.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/shareholders-reject-aviva-pay-plans-7711853.html

....... In these days of austerity measures, why do those at the top of the pay ladder (like Oliver Twist) want more?

Digging their own hole comes to mind.

Alert... aLeRt.... ALERT>>>>>

This clip contains severe browning!!!

The Talented Mr Shorten...

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=557_1335621847

Bernice:

AD....do you think Obama knows what they think of him???

Walking Eagle" is the name given to a bird so full of **** it can no longer fly.
President BARACK OBAMA was invited to address a major gathering of the American Indian Nation two weeks ago. At the conclusion of his speech, the Tribes presented Obama with a plaque inscribed with his new Indian name, "Walking Eagle." The proud President Obama accepted the plaque and then departed in his motorcade to a fundraiser, waving to the crowds. A news reporter later asked the group of chiefs how they came to select the new name they had given to the President.
They explained that "Walking Eagle" is the name given to a bird so full of **** it can no longer fly.

Local elections in some areas today.. No wonder the Conservatives didn't want to blast Murdoch.

After the expenses scandal, the Conservatives are known to have a dishonest streak.

Bernice: I wouldn't put anything past Obama. He's a dishonest man.

Artful Dodger: I found this some where, what do you think? are thing that bad?

***The reason Obama is keeping troops in Afghanistan is there are no jobs for them back home. He doesn't want the unemployment rate to jump before the Nov. elections.***

Well.... The Conservatives are worried about support and what dirt Murdoch can dish out on them, and they need the papers he controls to support them. Otherwise the Conservatives have no real chance at the next election.

... Seeing as NI took as it's duty to gather dirt on anyone they can.. and they are already starting to start telling on how the Conservatives have been playing a game of scratch my back...

Murdoch might have a few embarrassing emails... It's already bad for the PM.

.. After the expenses scandal, and the amount of immoral expenses use..

and the rest of the story on Murdoch was???

who said that the remarks etc on/about/to Mr Murdoch were "unjust and highly partisan"?

Just asking

The bombshell is on page 70 of the report by the Culture Media and Sport Select Committee into News International and phone-hacking.

It is worth quoting in full:

"If at all relevant times, Rupert Murdoch did not take steps to become fully informed about phone-hacking, he turned a blind eye and exhibited wilful blindess to what was going on in his companies and publications.

"This culture, we consider, permeated from the top throughout the organisation and speaks volumes about the lack of effective corporate governance at News Corporation and News International.

We conclude therefore that Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company".

That description of Mr Murdoch by the British parliament as "not a fit person" is likely to have significant consequences.

It will force the board of News Corporation to review whether the 81 year-old, who created one of the most powerful media groups the world has ever seen, should remain as its executive chairman.

It will give ammunition to those News Corporation shareholders who would like to loosen the hold over the company of the Murdoch dynasty.

It will push Ofcom, the media regulator, closer to the conclusion that British Sky Broadcasting is not fit and proper to hold a broadcasting licence, for as long as News Corporation owns 39% of BSkyB.
'Savage criticism'

Nor is that the only one of the MPs' conclusions which will shake News Corporation, and its British subsidiary, News International, owner of the Sun tabloid and of the News of the World prior to its closure.

Mr Murdoch's right hand man for decades, Les Hinton, is deemed to have misled the committee in 2009 by "not telling the truth" about substantial payments to Clive Goodman - the News of the World's former royal reporter who was jailed for phone hacking- and how he authorised those payments.

Mr Hinton is also ruled to have "misled" the committee about the extent of his knowledge that phone hacking extended beyond Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire (the private detective who carried out the hacking on behalf of jounalists).

He is, say MPs, "complicit in the cover-up at News International".

As expected, the MPs are savage in their criticism of the former News of the World editor, Colin Myler, and of Tom Crone, the former legal manager of News International's newspapers, for misleading them about what they knew about phone hacking and for failing to pursue alleged hackers.

But more damaging for News Corporation is that MPs say that senior executives, such as Rupert Murdoch's son James, should have seen that the company's official view, that there was a single rogue hacker, was not sustainable.

The MPs say: "if there was a 'don't ask, don't tell' culture at News International, the whole affair demonstrates huge failings of corporate governance at the company and its parent, News Corporation".

The committee says that News International "wished to buy silence" by settling legal actions with victims of hacking that included confidentiality clauses.


>>>>>> In other words a corrupt organisation.

Word of the week.

Cackiavellian (adj): Acting in a Machiavellian manner, while being so cack-handed about it that everybody sees through your deception. The worse of both worlds – transparent dishonesty. Usually applied to politicians, as befits a neologism coined for that class. The etymology is brand spanking new, since it comes from the splendid Marina Hyde’s column in today’s Guardian, Rupert Murdoch may be a monster but David Cameron and co are far worse. She is, of course, referring to our “political elite” – an oxymoron if ever I heard one.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Rupert Murdoch may be a monster but David Cameron and co are far worse

Murdoch's contempt for politicians demonstrated at Leveson this week is perhaps the one thing we can all agree with him on
Marina Hyde
guardian.co.uk, Friday 27 April 2012 19.15 BST
Article history

Murdoch's contempt for politicians seems largely borne of the embarrassing ease with which he is able to persuade them to fawn over him.

I know we're all ending this week desperate to find common ground with Rupert Murdoch, so I hope to be of assistance. After all, arguably the most striking feature of the News Corp boss's testimony before the Leveson inquiry was his radioactive contempt for the politicians with which he has been so inconveniently saddled. As someone who has long treated a change in government as the shuffling of junior personnel, Murdoch appears to have concluded that you really can't get the staff any more. And as an electorate that has concluded that you really can't get the overlords any more, we might ironically sympathise.

The list of things for which you could blame Rupert is hardly under-aired at present, but only the most piously naive would think self-interested politicking was worthy of a place on it. Blaming Murdoch for attempting to influence policy in his commercial favour is like disagreeing with gravity. He should be expected to behave like a rapacious corporate monster because that is what he is.

Where people have a right to expect far more, however, is from those notionally elected to look after their interests. The trouble with the Christian right is that it tends to be neither, runs a popular diss, and you could say the same for our "political elite". They are as cackiavellian as they are bottom-flight.

Rupert Murdoch's grip on his media empire was dramatically challenged yesterday after his company was labelled a "toxic shadow state" which launched a dirty tricks campaign against MPs and now faces a salvo of phone-hacking claims in the United States.

On a tumultuous day for the media mogul, the lawyer who brought the first damages claims against the News of the World in Britain said he had uncovered new allegations of the use of "dark arts" by News Corp in America and was ready to file at least three phone-hacking lawsuits in the company's backyard.

The sense of a legal net tightening around Mr Murdoch and News Corp was heightened by the announcement that he and his son James will testify separately next week before the Leveson Inquiry into press standards during three days of what is likely to be uncomfortable scrutiny of alleged widespread criminality in their British tabloid newspapers.

In a separate development, the royal editor of The Sun became the latest journalist on the paper to be arrested on suspicion of making corrupt payments to public officials.

The arrest coincided with the publication of an incendiary book on the scandal which levelled new accusations that the NOTW set out on an extraordinary campaign of intimidation of MPs to try to blunt their investigations into its alleged law breaking.

Last night senior MPs called for News International (NI) to be investigated by the Commons for potential contempt of Parliament over the claims that members of the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee were targeted by attempts to dig dirt on their private lives. Dial M for Murdoch, written by the Labour MP Tom Watson and The Independent's Martin Hickman, also alleges that:

l Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of NI, was bugged in her own office shortly before she resigned last summer over the phone hacking of Milly Dowler, the murdered schoolgirl.

l On his release from prison, Glenn Mulcaire, the convicted NOTW hacker, allegedly was contracted to give security advice to a private security company, Quest, whose chairman is Lord Stevens, a former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.

l NI intermediaries approached Mr Watson with a "deal" to "give him" former NOTW editor and Downing Street press chief Andy Coulson but that Ms Brooks was "sacred".

NI, which runs Mr Murdoch's British newspapers, said it had no comment to make on the book.

At a packed Westminster press conference, Mr Watson, who is a member of the Culture, Media and Sport committee, said the claim that the NOTW set out in 2009 to undermine the MPs investigating it came from Neville Thurlbeck, the NOTW's former chief reporter.

In the book, Mr Thurlbeck, who has been arrested in connection with phone hacking, says: "An edict came down... and it was find out every single thing you can about every single member: who was gay, who had affairs, anything we can use." Mr Thurlbeck told The Independent last night that the order to target the MPs, which involved assigning two politicians each to a group of six reporters, had not originated from inside the paper but instead came from "elsewhere inside News International". He insisted that NOTW staff had been reluctant and there was a "degree of procrastination" before the plan was "suddenly and unexpectedly halted about 10 days later".

Mr Watson, who has received an apology from NI after he was placed under surveillance, said he believed the campaign was nonetheless successful and had contributed to a decision by the media committee not to demand that Ms Brooks give evidence to it in 2010.

He added: "Parliament was, in effect, intimidated. News International thought they could do this, that they could get away with it, that no one could touch them; and they actually did it, and it worked."

Labelling News Corp a "toxic institution", he added: "We conclude that the web of influence which News Corporation spun in Britain, which effectively bent politicians, police and many others in public life to its will, amounted to a shadow state."

......Hours after publication of the book, Mark Lewis, the lawyer who has doggedly pursued hacking claims, told a press conference in New York that he was investigating allegations of impropriety at Mr Murdoch's US media companies, including Fox News. He said a high-profile trip to America to prepare claims on behalf of victims whose phones were allegedly hacked on US soil had generated a slew of new allegations about wider use of "dark arts" to obtain private information.

He said: "The investigation in the UK began with one claim by one client and look where it is now. While it starts in America with three cases, it seems likely it might end up with more."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/hacking-scandal-the-net-tightens-on-the-murdochs-7661722.html


But surely, conservatives don't lie......




Yeah right!!

Bernice: We probably do sadly

OMG...do Americans put up with this>??


http://shine.yahoo.com/shine-food/goes-appetite-7-gross-facts-processed-food-211800634.html