news reporting

Sean Hoare, the reporter who first blew the whistle on News of the World editor Andy Coulson for the publication's phone hacking scandal, was found dead at his home in Watford, England on Monday according to reports in the Guardian and Hollywood Reporter.

The report follows the recent arrest and detainment of former Murdoch chief Rebekah Brooks by British police on charges of conspiring to illegally intercept communications as well as corruption, in the form of bribing police.

According to a report in the Guardian, Hertfordshire police did not confirm Hoare's identity, but stated "At 10.40am today [Monday 18 July] police were called to Langley Road, Watford, following the concerns for the welfare of a man who lives at an address on the street. Upon police and ambulance arrival at a property, the body of a man was found. The man was pronounced dead at the scene shortly after. The statement continues, "The death is currently being treated as unexplained but not thought to be suspicious. Police investigations into this incident are ongoing."

In 2007 Coulson stepped down as News of the World editor, a result of the the phone-hacking scandal. Coulsen then became Prime Minister David Cameron's director of communications that same year.

The News of the World phone hacking scandal involves the alleged industrial scale phone hacking by publications of News International and the collusion and bribery of the Metropolitan Police.

Between January 11, 2002 and April 23, 2011 (one day before the latest Wikileaks release of the Guantanamo files) there were already about 15 million search entries, 5 million images, 25,000 videos, 6 thousand news items, 900 related books
and around 80 releated movies - including an American stoner styled 'comedy' pictured to your right - about the Guantanamo bay detention and torture camp.

While new information has been published in Wikileaks' latest release of the Guantanamo files, a plethora of evidence about Guantanamo's child detainees, its specious justification and illegality were already available in the public domain. That includes a Senate Armed Services Committee report that stated that detainees were murdered in US custody.

As Jason Leopold said in my interview with him last week, "Murdered. I am talking about murder. I mean, this report talks about how the torture program was based on the US military's resistance to interrogation survival training technique...So, yes, you are absolutely right there are a number of documents and a number of reports that are out there. The problem is that people, and that includes some journalists, frankly don't take the time to read it."

The image above of 'Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo' is not a comedy. It's a horror show. And, Guantanamo Bay is only the beginning of the entertainment superpower's 'theater of cruelty', coming to a town near you.

The institutions of society and of government - in other words, the organs of power, their structure, and their relationship to one another - the press, the legislature, the executive, and the judicial - no longer function in a manner that ensures their intended counter balance to tyranny. As a result our nation's civic, civil, and military power has been usurped by the highest bidder, some of them even foreign, and our democratic republic is drowning in a sea of Blackwater.

Amidst the cacophony of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Libya perpetrated by forces loyal to Muammar Gadaffi - which this writer finds unbearable - (and for which the command principle at least holds him ultimately responsible) including murders, torture, bombing and artillery destruction of civilian infrastructure and the like, the case of Eman al Obaidi stands alone as one of particular importance as well as nauseating repugnance.

Firstly we must acknowledge the presumption of innocence within the particular context of Eman’s allegations. This was brought to my attention by a tweet from Bianca Jagger who said on 28th March:

WHY ALLEGED? How dare the media question her veracity RT @latimes: Libyan woman who alleged rape remains missing http://lat.ms/fsp9yz>

I have the most enormous respect for Bianca Jagger and found her vehement statement on this matter appropriate on the face of the circumstances in the arena of probabilities but not necessarily in the arena of presumptive law. In one respect the presumption needed further explanation: the LA Times headlines clearly were missing some nuance in that their traditional headline using the word ‘alleged” implicitly acknowledged the presumption, but they erred in not commenting contextually – the probability arena.