01/09/10 - 01/10/10 | Joana Morais

The World's Biggest WTF?!

30 September 2010 | Posted by 28 comments

There are certain things that go well beyond the bounds of our wildest imagination, execrable things that make you say: "WTF?!"

The McCanns in what should have been their daughter Madeleine fourth birthday, just 9 days after the 3 year old child's strange disappearance (May 12, 2007)

Madeleine's passport from the case files, for the record of her birthday date (May 12, 2003)

The McCann's "Fund" incorporation date on May, 15 2007,

and the certification as a private limited company (bellow)

The following two "Fund" site and on-line shop screenshots are self-explainable

As if it wasn't enough to trade mark the child's eye, and face with ridiculous plastic bracelets and T-shirts, this is the last outrageous squeezing drop! We already knew that respect was lacking amongst some people, but this....?!?!

Can someone, please, tell or advise the couple pictured bellow that to buy a pixel or a "tile advert", independently of the costs, in an obvious SEO marketing paid inclusion advertising strategy to promote their Fund and on-line shop is in extreme bad taste, to say the least. Thank you.

Looking Back on the McCann Case: British Ambassador John Buck and Algarve Consul Bill Henderson

26 September 2010 | Posted by 13 comments

British Ambassador John Buck and Algarve Consul Bill Henderson media conference extract, May 4 2007 - for future memory on the McCann affair via Murdoch's SkyNews Video archives

Document [PDF]
Freedom of Information Act on John Buck, The British Ambassador in 2007 at the time of Madeleine McCann disappearance.

«FCO added that, at the time of the internal review (December 2007), the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann had been ongoing and that, for legal reasons, it had not been possible to disclose further information then.

FCO told the Commissioner that, although the Portuguese authorities had released many documents about the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, sensitivities remained and FCO believed that the section 27(1)(a)* exemption still applied. If FCO were to disclose all the details about HM Ambassador’s contact with the Portuguese police they would risk damaging the relationship on which good inter-governmental co-operation was based.»

Related
El Pais Spot On!
El Debate : Case Madeleine
Madeleine: Portuguese Police Under Pressure
McCann may return to Portugal
Robert Murat was accused by 2 British "journalists"
Gerry McCann DID call the British Media First
McCanns Strange Connections: Another British Consul Resigns
UK police chief hits back at Portuguese detective’s claims
McCann Case: Foreign Office Secrets
On the phone
Emails in Maddie hunt stay a secret
Algarve invaded by 10 thousand photos of Maddie
McCann Case: Freedom of Information Act on John Buck former Ambassador
The Mysterious Disappearance of Madeleine McCann by Georges Moréas
McCanns Pressured Judiciary Police
Kate McCann Forced Political Pressure on the Investigation
McCanns left Portugal when the Cadaver Dogs arrived
McCanns: Questions That Need Answers
McCanns's Censure Portuguese Democracy and Freedom of Speech
Gonçalo Amaral Admits That Investigators Protected the McCanns
Madeleine: El Pais Interview with PJ’s National Director, Alípio Ribeiro

Is Maddie Still Alive?

23 September 2010 | Posted by 53 comments

McCann Case for future memory - Joseph Moura at the Early Show's Hannah Storm
broadcast by CBS in January 20, 2008

The G9 aka Tapas group timeline according to Joseph Moura that was broadcast at the 48 Hours Crime Show was made via his own investigative methods, that is, not based on the official criminal process. In July 2008 the Portuguese Public Prosecutor released the case files after the process was archived waiting for better evidence; the G9 timeline statements for the 3rd May 2007 present glaring inconsistencies and incongruences. Barcelona based Metodo 3 private detective agency, owned by Francisco Marco was substituted by the now FBI sought for alleged fraud and money laundering Kevin Halligen. Jane Tanner statement is not evidenced by the joint Portuguese and British investigation code-named Operation Task. The McCanns and their friends never did the reconstruction of the evening when Madeleine, aged almost 4, disappeared.

Kevin Halligen Extradition Saga: Red Herrings & White Elephants

21 September 2010 | Posted by 28 comments

Private cop '£1.3m scam'

A private detective accused of ripping off the Madeleine McCann fund is also wanted in the US over an alleged £1.3million fraud, it was revealed yesterday.

Kevin Halligen, 49, is being sought by the FBI for allegedly conning UK law firm Waterson and Hicks out of the sum by claiming he could help free two staff of a client, oil company Trafigura, jailed in the Ivory Coast over a 2006 chemical spill.

Westminster magistrates remanded Halligen, from Surrey, in custody until November 3.

in the Daily Mirror inconspicuous news article published today*

Republishing Former McCann detective Kevin Halligen Indicted for Fraud and Money laundering

Washington - Red Defence in Red Zone

INTELLIGENCE ONLINE - 09/10/2008

Fired abruptly by the Find Madeline Fund which has sought to find Madeline McCann, Red Defence International also wrangled in the past with Trafigura.

An affiliate of Red Defence International, a firm headed by Britain’s Kevin Halligen, the investigative concern Oakley International Group was hired in March, 2008 to help find Madeline McCann, the three-year-old British child who vanished in May, 2007 from a hotel on the Portuguese coast. In late August, the Find Madeline Fund, which bankrolls the search for the child, suddenly cut all links with Oakley International, officially for “inadequate results.”

It wasn’t the first time that companies owned by Halligen, who took part in MI 5 operations in Northern Ireland, have encountered problems with their customers. In September, 2006, Red Defence was retained by the Trafigura trading group after two of its senior executives, Claude Dauphin and Jean-Pierre Valentini, were arrested and clapped behind bars in Ivory Coast. A month previously, the Probo Koala, a ship chartered by Trafigura, had discharged toxic waste in dumps in the port of Abidjan. Red Defence, whose contact with Trafigura was lawyer Marc Aspinall, pulled out all the stops to secure the release of Dauphin and Valentini.

Through the firm WatchWood, Red Defence leased a Falcon business jet from the South African group Aerotrade, headed by Fred Rutte, and kept it on stand-by for months, at great expense. Red Defence additionally approached a private British security concern Oceans Five run by John Nash to ask that it provide commandos to mount an operation to rescue Dauphin and Valentini from Maca prison in Abidjan.

The operation, initially planned for mid-January, 2007, was put back on several occasions. Trafigura, which was negotiating simultaneously with the Ivory Coast authorities for the release of its executives, was worried about the constant postponements and the prohibitive cost of the operation.

It finally cut all ties with Red Defence in February, 2007. Shortly afterwards, Dauphin and Valentini were released after the payment of USD 198 million that was destined to cover the cost of a clean-up of waste from Probo Koala. Subsequently, Trafigura’s lawyer, Aspinall, demanded that sub-contractors hired by Red Defence reimburse some of the money paid to them , threatening legal proceedings.

Following that setback, Halligen moved to the United States and founded Oakley Security Services, whose initials OSS evoked those of the Office of Strategic Services, forerunner of the CIA. He re-named the firm Oakley International Group and teamed up with the lobbying concern Patton Boggs run by Thomas Boggs.

Madeleine fund in chaos as private eyes are axed after draining £500,000 Daily Mail

By DANIEL BOFFEY and MILES GOSLETT

Last updated at 10:14 PM on 23rd August 2008

A team of private investigators working behind the scenes to find Madeleine McCann has been axed after being paid £500,000 from publicly donated funds.

The Find Madeleine Fund quietly engaged the services of a US-based company which was awarded the lucrative six-month contract earlier this year.

The company, Oakley International, which boasts former British security service and FBI contacts, was hired to monitor the Madeleine Hotline, carry out detective work and review CCTV footage of possible sightings of the missing girl around the world.

A source revealed that the company had also spent resources in an attempt to infiltrate a paedophile ring in Belgium.

However, the company's contract will now not be renewed. The Mail on Sunday has learned that double-glazing tycoon Brian Kennedy, who has been underwriting the fund's search for Madeleine, has conducted a review of the agency's work and has become unhappy with the progress it was making.

The deal was abruptly ended following a meeting last week after the fund brought in independent monitors to assess how the money was spent.

The cost of employing the agency - run by a Briton, Kevin Halligen - has drained the Madeleine fund and there is now less than £500,000 left.

The development is likely to dismay the thousands who gave to the appeal, and raise questions about how the fund has been administered.

Mr Kennedy, who owns Sale Sharks rugby club, was said to be 'angry' because he believed Oakley's bills, estimated to be more than £80,000 a month, were too much for the results they achieved.

A source said: 'There is a sense that they were meaning well but hadn't got as far as they should for the money involved.

'Brian Kennedy thought their work was far too pricey and wanted to know where the money was being spent. He wasn't satisfied with their answers and the contract was not renewed.

'Madeleine's parents, Gerry and Kate, have been kept informed all along and agree with the decision. A lot of people were asking questions about where the money was being spent.'

Oakley International won the contract after an introduction by another company, Red Defence International (RDI), based in Jermyn Street, Central London.

Listed as being involved with both companies was Mr Halligen, 47, a communications expert. He is given as the 'contact name' for Oakley International Group, a company registered in Washington DC as the manufacturer of search and navigation equipment.

The company says it has annual sales of £33,000 and only one employee, who appears to be Mr Halligen.

The address given for the company is 2550 M Street NW Washington, which is the downtown office of Patton Boggs, one of the largest and most powerful law companies in America.

A source at the law firm said last night that the lawyer who represented Mr Halligen was unavailable for comment.

RDI, formed in 2005, bills itself as 'an experienced provider of crisis prevention, management and expertise'. It claims to have a presence in Washington DC and Virginia and representation in the Middle East, Africa and Central America.

However, its latest set of accounts is two months overdue and it faces being fined by HM Revenue & Customs.

Among the main players working on the McCann contract were Mr Halligen and Henri Exton, 57, who headed the Greater Manchester Police undercover unit until 1993. He then worked for the Government before moving into the private sector.

One day after a crisis meeting last week with the Madeleine fund administrators, Mr Halligen resigned as a director of RDI.

Mr Exton, of Bury, Lancashire, has the Queen’s Police Medal and an OBE. During the Seventies and Eighties his work included uncovering organised crime rings and recruiting supergrasses.

He also infiltrated football gangs, at one stage becoming a leader of the Young Guvnors, who followed Manchester City, and was forced to take part in organised incidents to preserve his cover.

Previously, the McCann fund had employed a Spanish detective agency called Metodo 3. However, the fund lost confidence in them, especially after they announced they would find Madeleine by last Christmas.

She had disappeared from the resort of Praia da Luz, Portugal, on May 3, 2007, nine days short of her fourth birthday.

A spokesman for the McCanns said yesterday: 'Kate and Gerry, the fund and their backers have always sought to employ the very best people and resources in the ongoing search for Madeleine.

'Kate and Gerry, via the fund and the backers, continue to employ many such resources and it is true that Red Defence and Oakley were part of those resources.

'I simply will not comment on any personnel, financial or operational details whatsoever.'

No one could be reached for comment at Oakley International or Red Defence International.

Mr Kennedy, estimated to be worth about £250million, became involved after being moved by the plight of the McCanns during the period they were made formal suspects – arguidos – in Madeleine's disappearance. Portuguese prosecutors dropped the couple's arguido status last month.

The 47-year-old made his money in double-glazing and home improvement ventures with companies including Everest windows. His Latium Group business empire has an annual turnover of about £400million.

Department of Justice Press Release

For Immediate Release

November 12, 2009 United States Attorney's Office

District of Columbia

Contact: (202) 514-7566

United Kingdom Man Indicted for Fraud

Washington, D.C.—Kevin R. Halligen, 48, of Surrey, United Kingdom, was indicted today on charges of wire fraud and money laundering by a grand jury sitting in the District of Columbia, announced Acting U.S. Attorney Channing D. Phillips and Joseph Persichini, Jr., Assistant Director in Charge of the Washington Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The indictment alleges that from November 2006 to January 2007, Halligen engaged in a scheme to defraud a London-based law firm of $2,100,000. The indictment alleges that Halligen falsely represented to the law firm that these funds would be used to pay expenses incurred in the United States to help secure the release of two executives of a client of the law firm who were arrested in the country of Ivory Coast. Contrary to these representations, Halligen, the indictment alleges, used the funds for his own benefit including purchasing a mansion located in Great Falls, Virginia.

In announcing the indictment, Acting U.S. Attorney Phillips and FBI Assistant Director in Charge Persichini praised the work of the FBI Special Agent who investigated this case. They also commended Paralegal Specialist Mary Treanor, Legal Assistants Jamasee Lucas, Sabrina Brown, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Vasu Muthyala, who is prosecuting the case.

An indictment is merely a formal charge that a defendant has committed a violation of criminal laws and every defendant is presumed innocent until, and unless, proven guilty.

in Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI]

Related

More on Carter Ruck

External
Cryptome Mark Hollingsworth Investigates The McCann Files & the D Notice - 8 October 2009
Lenta.ru С газетой Лебедева решил судиться участник поисков Маделейн Макканн - 18 November 2009
Бывший британский контрразведчик подал в суд на газету Лебедева - 18 November 2009

* 14.00pm GMT Daily Mirror updated their article's title to reflect their journalistic style

screenshot 7 hours ago
screenshot 1 hour ago

So childhood should be more hazardous? Stuff and nonsense

19 September 2010 | Posted by 5 comments

We love the world of The Dangerous Book for Boys, but few of us actually want our children falling out of trees

If politicians talk disingenuous rubbish about risk, then so equally do many parents

Considering how many parents have declared that seven is quite old enough to travel alone, it is amazing how few children of this age one sees of a morning queuing at bus stops, flashing past on tiny cycles or crossing arterial roads hand in hand, just as we did in the 60s on the way to the blacking factory.

Hulton Archive | The way we were: a boy takes aim, 1958.

By Catherine Bennett

Either they are so minute as to be hard to spot or, like the game of conkers and the company of William Brown, independent travel is rather less appealing in practice than when a point about the malignity of elf’n’safety officialdom needs to be made. Though, as the education secretary Michael Gove proved last week, a widespread insincerity about the joys of traditional childhood does not diminish its political value as a jobsworth-insulting technique.

While parents were denouncing the council that bossily pronounced Isabelle McCullough too young to cross a main road alone (although her school bus driver was also of this opinion), Michael Gove was widely taken at his word when he said: “We need to change our bubblewrap culture; we need a Dangerous Book for Boys culture.”

I can only think the Gove family had more success than mine with page 252, Hunting and Cooking a Rabbit, in which the authors assure the timid: “There is a great satisfaction in pulling off a difficult shot over a distance.”

As for schools, even teachers with access to a gun and a 30-yard range may find it difficult to provide boys with the recommended knives for skinning and disembowelling the dead animal – a heavybladed cleaver or, failing that, a penknife, preferably with a serrated edge. And how many teenage boys would wish to risk their own? “A standard kitchen knife,” warn the authors, Hal and Conn Iggulden, “is likely to be damaged if used as a chopper.”

Although, as its millions of adult readers will know, the Igguldens’ delightful book abounds in stories, poems, lists and harmless occupations from the era when there was nothing to play with besides nature and old newspapers, this is not, obviously, the content being advocated by Mr Gove in his campaign against our risk-averse society. The greatest risk, where failure to make a paper aeroplane or boat is concerned, is the crushing disappointment of the parent who realises that her affection for The Dangerous Book for Boys is generated in the same part of the brain that responds to faux-vintage cupcakes and will not be satisfied until it owns a Cath Kidston sewing box shaped like a rustic cottage.

No, what appeals to an educationalist such as Gove or Toby Young or, going back a bit, Thomas Arnold, are potentially bloody activities that will, as proven throughout the empire, cultivate the manly attributes.

Girls, with their innate sissiness, appear to be less at risk from bubblewrap. It is not yet clear if he will get permission for his year seven bomb disposal course, but the state academy to be opened by Toby Young still promises to produce specimens in the fine, Baden-Powell mould, given its founder’s fear, when he endorsed Gove’s approach, that schools are in danger of producing “cautious little wet noodles who daren’t say boo to a goose”. It cannot be long, for example, before youthful knife crime and muggings are conducted in nervous silence.

“We need to dismantle the whole edifice of mollycoddling rules and regulations,” says Young, “so our children are free to play proper, oldfashioned games even if they involve risk of injury.” Without this kind of physical threat, Digby Jones, the businessman and favourite of the sportsman turned noodle Gordon Brown, is another who fears for the nation’s future. Before he quit government to devote himself to baking ever-harder conkers, Lord Jones lamented “cotton-wool kids” whose unfamiliarity with discomfort is “potentially fatal to our economics and social wellbeing”. Is he right? One turns, instinctively to Maggie Atkinson, the Commissioner for Children, who is charged with representing their views.

Would children like life to be more dangerous? Tellingly, perhaps, Ms Atkinson would not risk talking.

Parents, however, seem sympathetic to Gove’s proposal for more dangerous schools, for boys at least. (For girls, although Mr Gove has yet to identify an inspirational text, The Great Big Glorious Book for Girls, coincidentally co-authored by Mrs Gove [Sarah Vine,], advocates a different, yet equally vintage routine featuring sewing, daisy chains and Chinese burns).

Even if there is little evidence around to suggest strong parental interest in the benefits of personal injury, research indicates that they would like the state to supply some risk, as a corrective to its excessive vigilance. A survey commissioned by the British Toy and Hobby Association has just found that three-quarters out of the 2,000 parents it asked think that schools are too concerned with safety at playtime. Explaining the findings, a psychologist said: “Parents go nuts if their children get hurt at school.”

Plainly, if politicians talk disingenuous rubbish about the improving nature of risk then so, equally, do many parents. Schools may be over-zealous enforcers of safety regulations, but it is parents who invest in buggies built like tanks, and in four-wheel-drive tanks used as buggies, parked in mother-and-child slots designed to protect precious young legs from excessive walking.

cadaverine vestiges were detected on Madeleine's plush toy

It is not long since parenting websites now targeting Lincolnshire county council were accusing the supposedly irresponsible parents of Madeleine McCann. After that, the pursuit switched to social workers for betraying Baby P.

Contrary to Tory principle, mollycoddling in schools is not all bigstate officialdom gone mad, but an answer to the public mood post Dunblane, Soham, successive child protection failures and occasional, inexcusable accidents on Outward-Bound style adventures of absolute pointlessness (unless Sir Digby knows some CEOs who owe their careers to kayaking). Not forgetting Esther Rantzen and her tireless efforts for the compensation culture: “How much could you claim?”

One of the charms of The Dangerous Book for Boys, of course, is that it depicts a prelapsarian, pre-Rantzen state in which parents thrill with pleasure, rather than dread, when a child requests the tree, timber, drill, decking, hammer and “60 man-hours” required to build a treehouse in their idyllic, firing range size garden.

“Along with a canoe or a small sailing dinghy,” say the authors, “a treehouse is still one of the best things you could possibly have.” Thanks.

One could easily hate the Igguldens, except that this stuff really satisfies the same kind of yearnings as Swallows and Amazons and The Railway Children, Just William and the Famous Five. Touching as it is, that Gove should share this glimpse of his fantasy world, we are stuck with Jacqueline Wilson.

The Observer | 2010-09-19 | UK | Page: 33 Paper Edition - online here

Media Culpa: PCC, Regulation, Ethics and Lusophobia

18 September 2010 | Posted by 16 comments

And there is plenty more – proof, if we needed it, of that remarkable line once uttered by a tabloid news editor: "... that is what we do – we go out and destroy people's lives."

News of the world? Fake Sheikhs & Royal Trappings by Peter Burden,

book cover image

«A number of recent stories in and about the press have once again, focused attention on the role of the Press Complaints Commission (“PCC”) as the “independent regulator” of the print media. There is the The “News of the World” phone hacking story and the shocking treatment of Wayne Rooney and William Hague (see our posts here and here). There are also the recent “privacy injunctions” which, as the Liberal Democrat Voice points out, also suggest that the regime regulating privacy is not working. In relation to the hacking story, the PCC Watch Blog concludes that “The PCC is not equipped to deal with phone hacking and not constituted to act as a regulator”.

As the then director of the PCC Tim Toulmin, told the House of Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport:

“We are a complaints body; we are not statutory; we are like an ombudsman, really. People want us to be more like a general regulator with statutory powers and so on. That is a separate argument; the fact is we are not that body”.

There is a strong argument that, as a complaints body, the PCC cannot deal with the general issues about the way in which the press obtains and publishes information. What is needed is a regulator.

A similar point is made in an article in the Guardian this week, by Professor Brian Cathcart*. He was the specialist adviser to the Select Committee for its inquiry into press standards, privacy and libel. His article asks the question “Is the time ripe for statutory regulation of the media?” He draws attention to various problems with the press over recent times

“Besides the outrage of phone hacking we have had the Max Mosley case, where the “journalism” of the News of the World was exposed in court as an offence against ethical standards. In the McCann case virtually the entire tabloid press behaved, over almost a whole year, with a wanton disregard for truth, fairness and justice”.»

more at Inform's Blog

A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words

* Brian Cathcart is not defending fairness and unbiased reporting regarding the McCann affair, whilst he states the above, the xenophobic attack perpetrated by the UK media in general to Portugal, on the Portuguese institutions and its people clearly means nothing to him. Hypocrisy? Deontology? Ethics? Sardines anyone?

From the Professor's hand, published on the Guardian back in March 1, 2010 (extract):

«But when our national press is exposed as not fit for purpose – as it was by MPs last week in relation to the McCann case, among other scandals – those journalists and editors somehow don't feel the same. So there wasn't room on the front page of the Sun last week to howl for the resignation of, to name but one, Peter Hill, editor of the Daily Express. Nor on the front of the Daily Mirror. Nor the Daily Mail. And certainly not the Express or the Daily Star.

Not on the inside pages either, where the coverage of the report by the Commons select committee on the media displayed the kind of restraint for which, a year or so ago, Kate and Gerry McCann would have been grateful. So restrained were most of these papers, in fact, that their readers might be forgiven for not knowing about the report at all.

The committee (to which I acted as adviser) totted up the hundreds, yes hundreds, of untrue, made-up articles about the McCann case for which papers had to pay up and make apologies. It noted these were only a sample from an even wider pool of falsehoods, and it quoted Gerry McCann and Hill in agreement that the couple could have sued every newspaper group, and won.»

Brian Cathcart is professor of journalism at Kingston University and was specialist adviser to the Commons select committee on culture, media and sport for its inquiry into press standards, privacy and libel, 2008-10

Video Intermezzo

Greenslade and Meyer's debate on Daily Politics via BBC

Enter the media lawyer

“PCC: secretive, biased and weak” by Jonathan Coad published at British Journalism Review December 2009 (extracts only)

“The press has the power to affect government policy, force MPs to resign, glean intimate details of the lives of the famous via huge bribes to their employees to betray their confidence. It can undertake these activities safe in the knowledge that, because few have the means to challenge it legally, and there is no effective regulation, the press faces no sanction if it transgresses. As the Information Commissioner’s Office said recently, it had been “badly let down” by Parliament, the courts and the newspapers in its attempt to stop the “flourishing” trade in illegally obtained confidential personal information.

This ugly trade should have prompted a rigorous response by the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), which should have led the way in stamping it out rather than leaving it to the overworked Commons Culture Media and Sport Committee. But the PCC has repeatedly shown itself impotent and unwilling to tackle the excesses of the powerful industry that it regulates. That leaves us all victims of those excesses either directly, as our rights are infringed by it, or as consumers when we are fed a polluting diet of falsehood and inaccuracy by the press because it is profitable and sanction-free to do so. This is as much the fault of successive governments as it is the press, because none has had the courage to instigate a press regulation system that can command confidence.

My experience of dealing with the PCC since its inception suggests it is principally a cartel, set up for the purpose of ensuring that the lack of press accountability is preserved against any form of effective regulation and to the clear detriment of the rights of the individual. (...) One of the most obvious anomalies of the British media is that the broadcast element is regulated by Ofcom – a body also weighted in favour of the industries it regulates, but at least one with statutory powers – yet the hugely powerful print media has no such formal/statutory regulation. Only the press-created/appointed/funded PCC has any “regulatory” role for newspapers, magazines and their online content.

(...) One of the problems faced by anyone appraising the PCC is that it is astonishingly secretive about its own procedures – in stark contrast to the complaints made by the press about the lack of openness in government, Parliament and, recently, Sir John Chilcot’s Iraq inquiry. The press rightly tells us to be suspicious of any institution that hides its processes from public view – particularly if it is one that both makes its own rules and administers them. When you add that the PCC is also the self-regulatory body of one of the most powerful institutions in the country, inevitably alarm bells ring.

The PCC refuses to be subject to the Freedom of Information Act, to allow either the public or complainants to attend its adjudications, or any public representation whatsoever on the Committee that writes/reviews the Code of Practice. Parliament is a completely open book in comparison.

One of the ironies of the refusal by the PCC to be subject to FOI is that the Act itself has come about, to a substantial degree, as a result of lobbying by journalists. The press led the charge against MPs’ attempts to evade the impact of the FOI on their own activities, and in particular concerning their own self-interest in the form of MPs’ expenses. The cries of foul from the editorial pages when attempts were made to exclude the issue of MPs’ remuneration from the Freedom of Information Act were deafening.

The hypocrisy is startling. Both predecessors of new PCC director Baroness Peta Buscombe (Lord Wakeham and Sir Christopher Meyer) lobbied the Department of Culture Media and Sport determinedly to make sure the PCC would not be made subject to the Freedom of Information Act. Ofcom, which regulates the broadcast media, is a statutory body which is plainly independent nonetheless and apparently manages to undertake its role under the burden of being a public authority. Furthermore, since a series of craven governments have in effect delegated the regulation of the press to the PCC, in any sensible analysis, it is a public authority.

Leaving aside the obvious complicity between government and the PCC for their mutual benefit on this issue, why would an industry that tells us repeatedly that no modern democratic society can be free while important decisions which affect all our lives are made in secret insist that its own regulation be conducted in precisely that way? This immediately arouses suspicion that there is much that institution wants to hide.

(...) The continued claims made by the PCC to be “independent” are manifestly untrue, since it was set up by the press; is funded by the press; its members are appointed by the press; seven of the 17 Commission members are editors; the lay members are appointed by the Commission and the PCC Code is written exclusively by the press. The PCC’s obvious lack of independence renders it both structurally and culturally incapable of fulfilling its role as the guardian of the interests of the general public against those of the immensely powerful commercial organisations that control print journalism. The proof of this – since it will allow no genuine scrutiny of its procedures or policies – comes from a review of its actions.

The acid test is whether it acts with any independence when it comes to the administration of its sole sanction: obliging the press to publish corrections/apologies with “due prominence”. In this, its primary activity, the PCC unashamedly favours its paymasters at the expense of the interests of public that it is tasked to protect from breaches of the press’s own code. If an article is inaccurate, there are three groups with an interest in the visibility of the redress. For two of those groups the greater prominence that is given to the correction the better. For only one of those groups is it preferable for the prominence given to corrections to be as minimal as possible. If that minority interest group takes precedence and is the very industry that funds/appoints it, then the PCC’s claim to be independent must be false.

For the first of those groups, the complainant(s), their family, friends etc, the more people who read the correction the better. So it is with the second group – the readership of the paper and the public generally (i.e. those that glean the false information via other media, especially where front page stories are concerned): the more of them that learn the truth the better. It is only the third group, those running the newspaper or magazine concerned, on whose interests such a principle would impinge.

This then is where the true test of the PCC’s independence comes: the press sells by the square centimetre prominence in its pages/websites in the form of advertising, so it well knows that many more people glean information from an article taking up the whole page, along with pictures, than a correction taking up, say, 5 per cent of the space of the original subject 7 of complaint.

If the PCC permits corrections and apologies of 5 per cent of the size of the original, it is not providing fair and common sense interpretation of the obligation on the press to publish corrections with “due prominence”. No truly independent body would do such a thing, but that is frequently what the PCC does. If the PCC had any degree of independence it would conduct itself in accordance with the aspirations of the public as a whole – not those of the press.” »

Food for thought
Exclusive Video: McCanns Press Conference

One day...

13 September 2010 | Posted by 20 comments

In a commencement address delivered May 11, 1996, Sagan related his thoughts on the deeper meaning of the photograph Pale Blue Dot [above, top left]

«From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.»

Carl Sagan | Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994)

John Lennon | Imagine (1971)

Never Forget...

12 September 2010 | Posted by 69 comments

«Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.»
Martin Luther King Jr., (1929 - 1968) Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963
US black civil rights leader & clergyman; Nobel Prize in Peace 1964; assassinated