[The nonpartisan report] describes in detail the ethical compromise of government lawyers who offered “acrobatic” advice to justify brutal interrogations and medical professionals who helped direct and monitor them. And it reveals an internal debate at the International Committee of the Red Cross over whether the organization should speak publicly about American abuses; advocates of going public lost the fight, delaying public exposure for months, the report finds.
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Scott Musgrove’s The Last Good Man signed limited edition pigment print.
All profits go to the American Red Cross. Discover more purchases that help Sandy victims on the Gifts for Good Pinterest Board.
Today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) called on the House and Senate to investigate whether journalists working for Rupert Murdoch’s News International (NI), owned by News Corp., have hacked into the voicemail of Americans.
Despite claims by NI executives that the phone hacking scandal enveloping Murdoch and his media empire was confined to the now-defunct News of the World, new evidence shows other Murdoch papers used the same tactics. Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was repeatedly targeted for more than a decade by other Murdoch publications.
Further, a former New York City police officer claims he was offered money by News of the World journalists to retrieve the phone records of 9/11 victims and their families.
“It is becoming increasingly clear this scandal was not perpetrated by a few rogue reporters, but was systematically orchestrated at the highest levels of News Corp.,” said CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan. “If Mr. Murdoch’s employees can be so brazen as to target the British prime minister, then it is not unreasonable to believe they also might hack into the voicemails of American politicians and citizens.”
NI executives repeatedly have claimed only a few “rogue” reporters at News of the World were involved in the hacking. In 2007, Les Hinton, one of Mr. Murdoch’s closest advisors and now the chief executive officer of Dow Jones, which publishes the Wall Street Journal, testified – it now appears untruthfully – before a parliamentary committee that the hacking was limited to a single reporter. Fox News and the New York Post are also owned by News Corp.
“Given the ever-increasing number of Murdoch publications involved, combined with the allegation that News Corp. journalists sought access to the voicemails of 9/11 victims and their families, America cannot leave this investigation entirely to the British. Congress should immediately initiate its own inquiry,” said Ms. Sloan. “Politicians in Washington may not be able to agree on much these days, but at the very least they should be able to agree that efforts to hack the phones of those killed in the worst terrorist attack in American history merits thorough public hearings.”
All the world’s major religions, with their emphasis on love, compassion, patience, tolerance, and forgiveness can and do promote inner values. But the reality of the world today is that grounding ethics in religion is no longer adequate. This is why I am increasingly convinced that the time has come to find a way of thinking about spirituality and ethics beyond religion altogether.
Herman Cain contradicted himself on torture, Mitt Romney offered a prescription for challenging China that didn’t add up and Newt Gingrich seemed to forget about crucial help by Pakistani intelligence in running down terrorists.
Factual missteps in the latest Republican presidential debate suggested that on some the knottiest foreign policy and national security issues of the time, contenders were out of their comfort zone. Several raised the prospect of an eventual war with Iran that the U.S., by any current measure, is ill-prepared to start.
posted a link Ethics Adviser Warned Palin About Trooper Issue 9:53 am - Comment "An informal adviser who has counseled Gov. Sarah Palin on ethics issues urged her in July to apologize for her…
At the end of August, as Hurricane Gustav threatened the coast of Texas, the Obama campaign called the Red Cross to say it would be routing donations to it via the Red Cross home page. Get your servers ready—our guys can be pretty nuts, Team Obama said. Sure, sure, whatever, the Red Cross responded. We’ve been through 9/11, Katrina, we can handle it. The surge of Obama dollars crashed the Red Cross Web site in less than 15 minutes.
News America [A division of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp] was led by Paul V. Carlucci, who, according to Forbes, used to show the sales staff the scene in “The Untouchables” in which Al Capone beats a man to death with a baseball bat. Mr. Emmel testified that Mr. Carlucci was clear about the guiding corporate philosophy.
According to Mr. Emmel’s testimony, Mr. Carlucci said that if there were employees uncomfortable with the company’s philosophy — “bed-wetting liberals in particular was the description he used” Mr. Emmel testified — then he could arrange to have those employees “outplaced from the company.”
This isn’t really the meat of the story, but it was the only bite-sized morsel I could break off to share. That said, it is highly evocative of the actions detailed within.
